


this is the serial number of our orbital gun (you better be sure before you leave me)

by thistleandthorn



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: And i mean Nuclear Winter, Catelyn and Cersei were Flappers, Cold War Spy AU, F/M, I dare you to find a single parenthesis in this, Non-Linear Narrative, Oberyn is an Astronaut, Pre-Apocalypse, i don't make the rules okay?, winter is coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:41:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27904645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistleandthorn/pseuds/thistleandthorn
Summary: The Northerners believe that the world will end with ice. The memory of ancient winters lives within them, an inherited starvation. Snow will seize back the land and purify the earth of the convoluted processes of springtime creation.Then, he opens his paper, reads of the wildfire that his nephew loves so much, keeps collecting and caching. He reads of Daenerys Targaryen and her mysterious dragons—whatever that means, couldn’t possibly actually be—sweeping Essos.He cannot help but wonder if it will be fire that claims them first.--“I feel like I do have to ask,” he breathes against her neck.She is sliding her thighs together, making small noises at the brush of his other hand, his thumb, against her nipple, can feel it pebble through the layers of satin.“Yes,” she sighs, frames his face with her hands and pulls it up, her head tumbling forward, meets his mouth.He breaks from kissing her, draws his hands up the length of her neck to cradle the back of her head, lets his fingers cord through her hair, says into the corner of her mouth, “Are you an Essosi spy?”--A series of vignettes (sort of) that make up a (sort of) love story.
Relationships: Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister/Tysha
Comments: 109
Kudos: 56





	1. we live in the steel yard on reels of information (and our care lies in the telegraph poles and the taxi to the station)

He woke at the second ring. Machine-gun trill. Still does not raise his head, reaches from his pillow. Clatter of the receiver, lets it fall heavy against his ear, scrubs his face, says, sleep-raw: “Hello.”

Tinned voice: “Jon Arryn’s dead.”

“Oh, fuck.”

\--

The Northerners believe that the world will end with ice. The memory of ancient winters lives within them, an inherited starvation. Snow will seize back the land and purify the earth of the convoluted processes of springtime creation.

The Others will come again before the end. Giants will bring chaos. Frost will break bonds of friendship, of kinship, and what will not freeze, will kill themselves in selfishness.

He sees Joffrey’s golden court, shining, high above the dark city streets still bending under wartime austerity, and wonders that when Robb Stark shouts that _winter is coming, it is coming, brothers, winter is coming_ from his milkcrates if there is some kind of prophecy, some bone-deep Northern knowing, there.

Then, he opens his paper, reads of the wildfire that his nephew loves so much, keeps collecting and caching. He reads of Daenerys Targaryen and her mysterious dragons—whatever that means, couldn’t possibly actually _be_ —sweeping Essos.

He cannot help but wonder if it will be fire that claims them first.

\--

He rolls into King’s Landing three days later. For the second time in six months, the city is draped in black.

He attends the funeral with ever other person within a train trip of King’s Landing. He dresses for the occasion. Monogrammed cuff links. Gold tie pin. Silk lapels. Doesn’t care if it looks gaudy for a day suit.

He finds Varys, nibbling the edge of a canape, at the corner of the great hall right at the beginning of the miserable reception.

He nurses his punch while Varys comments on the weather, on Gulltown’s chances at the King’s Tournament this year, on sadness of it, such a great man gone too soon, such a chasm on the world stage, had he seen Lysa, she had just _lived_ for Jon, hadn’t she?

Then, as the crowd swelled, deafens their talk, he asks, “It was the Essosi, wasn’t it?”

Varys inclines his head, says slowly, “I think we should move your assignment.”

Sip of wine, “What about Bronn? We can’t just leave him in the field—”

“I think he’s ready.”

“To handle?” he scoffs.

“He did a good job with the Payne boy last year.”

“Pod was _easy_ ,” he says, “Obedient.”

Varys ignores him, “We need this Arryn business sorted. You’ll finish this year out. Then we’ll see.”

\--

He does not finish the year out.

Woke first ring this time.

Another voice, layered under static, “Jorah Mormont’s been caught.”

The next morning, valise in hand, he steps on to a train to his sister’s.

\--

“And how was the Rock, brother?” his sister asks at luncheon.

She is still veiled in black—the High Septon had declared a year of mourning for the King. So, she sat in the burning blaze of summer’s end in full wool, veil pinned to her hair, looking like Lady Stoneheart had stepped out of bedtime stories and onto the veranda. It suited her, he thought.

“Quite restorative, thank you. And how are you?”

“Very well, I assure you. Joffrey’s gotten engaged!”

Again, is what she means.

She pours herself another glass of Dornish red from the bottle on the table. Sets the empty bottle on the ground.

“I saw that in the papers—the Tyrell girl,” he says, “Must be a nice distraction from the war he is about start in Essos.” 

Cersei glares, “I heard quite the amusing little tidbit the other day,” she said, suddenly smiling, “The Essosi made a deal with the Small Council—one of our spies for one of theirs. They sent us Jorah Mormont. You remember him? Who’d have thought? And who did we send?”

He knows who they sent.

“That girl! Now what was her name?” Cersei taps a finger against her chin, “Oh, yes. _Shae_. Fifteen hundred documents, I heard, she passed to the Essosi. And to _think_ I had her to dinner,” sympathetic clucks, “Rather embarrassing for you, to have it all dragged up again?”

He ignores her, matches her instead, “I am moving back to King’s Landing.”

Cersei’s eyes narrow, “Why?”

“Change of scenery,” he spears a cucumber with his fork, “Lannisport is boring me.” 

\--

They call it Operation Blackwater.

There are three suspects for the murder of Jon Arryn: Renly Baratheon, populist, known Northern sympathizer, troubled relationship with his brother the dead king; Petyr Baelish, Master of Coin, friend of Catelyn Stark, desperate for power; and Mace Tyrell, an opportunist, easily led, easily won.

He pins pictures of the three of them to a wall in his office.

“Whoever it is,” Varys said smoothly, “They will likely have a network—other more minor courtiers, maidservants, security, no single agent could pull a poisoning like that off.”

“You really think Mace Tyrell? His daughter _just_ got engaged to the King.”

Varys shrugged, sighed, “Nobody is a guarantee in times like these. Nobody.” 

\--

His first night at the Red Keep they have a dinner party. He has no official role beyond some vague thing to do with sewage or pipes but the whole Small Council turns up to fete him anyway. They sit around a long table spread with rare steak and potato galette and asparagus and fresh fruit gelatins, talk past each other’s ears.

The center of it all, the court’s new center is Margaery Tyrell. She is charming and beautiful and gracious and all the things he has read about in the papers. He sees the way Joffrey looks at her—there’s a madness in the boy, one they have, he has, worked hard to conceal—but he looks at his almost-bride like any man in the first flushes of love, all timorously hot, like someone just learned the letters of your true name.

He looks away, any honey from that boy is bound to be cut with something far less sweet.

Mace Tyrell looks like a cat who took the canary and the cream in a single gulp. He claps the King on his back and smiles at Petyr Baelish with _such_ glee that it soon begins to seem grotesque. This should have been Baelish’s victory, he remembers, Joffrey and Baelish’s ward, the Stark girl, had been a done deal for the longest time. He watches Baelish for any sign of hate, but Baelish merely clasps Tyrell’s elbow and moves to talk to Renly Baratheon.

\--

The thing that draws his attention to Sansa Stark first is how little she draws his attention.

Pretty girl. Impeccably mannered. Gown fit well if a season behind. But she dims next to Margaery. They all do, he supposes.

She stands at the elbow of her guardian, before the meal, sipping slowly at a glass of wine, some golden fizzy thing from Highgarden.

At dinner, she sits adjacent to Margaery, a place of honor. They are friends, he had heard, but given the fact that Margaery now has the ring that Sansa had worn until two months ago, he is surprised how close.

It is after dinner, in the parlor, while Margaery is laughing in Joffrey’s arms, insisting on putting on a record, Baelish is secluded in a corner with other men, he finds her alone by the hearth.

“Hello, my lady,” he says.

She looks up, a little startled. 

“Oh, I am sorry, Tyrion Lannister, isn’t it?” she says, extends her hand. The record rasps to life and distantly, he is aware, that Margaery is gasping that they should all _dance._

“Yes,” he takes it. Warm through satin gloves, “My lady, I am sorry for your loss.”

He almost regrets it. But she recovers, says calmly, “My father was a traitor. My brother is as well. I am grateful for the King’s kindness.” 

Oh, that catches his notice, too.

“Of course, my lady.”

He realizes, back in the quiet of his room—the whole evening she had only had one glass of wine.

\--

He had told Varys, when he had seen him at Robert’s funeral, that Joffrey’s first act as king would likely be a deadly farce. And the execution of Eddard Stark had been just that. He had heard about it from across the ocean, wrapped up in Shae and all her secrets.

When he had received the briefing book with news of Ned Stark’s arrest, he had risked a call to Varys.

“Is this real?”

“Oh, I assure you—”

“Eddard Stark—” he had spluttered, “Espionage, a _coup_ against the—”

“That information did not come from us—”

He had laughed, disbelieving, “What do you mean—”

“I think you know exactly what I mean.”

And so, Ned Stark, war hero, Warden of the North, best friend of the last king, intended goodfather to the next, had been shot by a firing squad in a prison yard outside King’s Landing without a trial.

\--

His office is in the basement of a government building on the outskirts of King’s Landing, far away from where anyone would bother to find him.

There is a plaque on his door that says ‘Tyrion Lannister—Manager for Western Infrastructure’. The door stays locked, and no one knocks on it.

Large metal desk. Broken down chair. Both far too tall for him.

The only mail that comes to the door is thick yellow envelopes delivered same time, every morning—collection of notes, neatly typed, from Varys’ little birds. He knows few of them by name, just knows that there is likely one in every room he has visited in his life.

The birds tap the Keep’s phones. A big recorder sits in the coat closet, whirs incessantly, records tape after tape after tape after tape. Whole nights he spends awake, waiting for clicks, waiting for voices.

He calls Podrick out of the field, too, to be with him. Hires him as secretary.

And so, they parse through documents and codes and pinning up grainy photographs of every member of court, scribbling any hints of their diaries on bits of paper. They web the walls in red string.

This is how he spends his days.

He spends most of his nights lounging with the rest of the court. Endless supper parties. Gallery openings. A ball or three. He drinks champagne and flatters wives into telling him where their husbands lunch. Keeps a matchbox camera in his pocket to capture secret moments and who speaks to who when they think everyone is distracted.

When the parties end, it is then he heads out to see Alayaya or Chataya who tell him about the men and women they find in their girls’ beds and the things they say when they are happy.

And so, he finds, within a month or two, the rumors about him shape, shift, shade. The Imp, they begin to call him, the Imp of Casterly Rock.

\--

He was recruited at the end of his last year at the Citadel. It was the final year of autumn—far past the first vibrant flushes of crimson and gold that had marked the beginning of his time there. The university quads were desolate, leaked of color, students already flocking to the warmth of the dormitories, the walking paths lined with skeleton trees, fingers reaching desperately towards the sky.

He is adrift, floating—

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

\--above the dying earth, barely paying it any mind.

\--

Maester Pycelle had called him to his office after class, three months before graduation, “Mr. Lannister! Come here a minute.”

He waited while Pycelle shuffled behind his desk, fuddling with papers. He almost assumed that he had forgotten he was there until Pycelle looked up suddenly, “I am hosting a supper party. Next week. I would like you to come.”

He raised his eyebrows, “For the Mathematical Society or—”

“No, no,” Pycelle said, bony finger raised, “Just a private dinner between friends. My house at eight o’clock, a week from today. Bring that friend of yours—”

“Bronn?”

“Yes and do tell him to wear a suit jacket.”

\--

Supper party turned out to be a generous word. There was only one other guest. Lord Varys.

He recognized him, of course. One was not raised at court without having caught some whispers about him.

Varys was bald, dressed in a brocade smoking jacket, signet ring on his little finger. It made him look like some sort of exotic creature, city-slick, certainly out of place in Pycelle’s country cottage. He was effusively complimentary of Pycelle’s menu, the newest piece in his art collection, the dying peonies in the foyer.

“Now, boys,” Varys said warmly, “Last few months, eh? What are you studying?”

“Mathematics and History,” he said. Bronn mumbled something about economics.

“And what do you plan to do after graduation?”

He stuttered through the loosely sketched idea for a gap year, a return to the Citadel, suddenly all too aware at how unfinished his life seemed—

Varys cut him off, “Have you considered government service?”

“Oh,” he shook his head, “No—like civil service? That’s my father’s trade, sir—”

Varys took a sip of the Dornish red at his elbow, “Not quite what I’m suggesting.”

Pycelle leaned in then, “Lord Varys, as I am sure you are aware, is the Master of Whispers. Head of Westerosi intelligence.”

Bronn’s eyes grew round, for once silent, stared at his cooling bisque.

He nodded coolly, “I am aware, yes.”

Varys smiled widely, “So I think you do know what I’m suggesting, don’t you?”

\--

Bronn accepted the position before dessert.

Varys smiled indulgently, gave him his card.

He did not say a thing.

After dinner, Pycelle gestured Bronn to his study, looking unsubtly over his shoulder to Varys and him still sat at the table.

“You are hesitant,” Varys said.

He did not answer, did not know what to say, picked up at a spare coffee spoon and tapped a tattoo against the table, finally, “I am unclear as to your interest in _me._ ”

Varys shrugged, “Why? You are exceptionally bright. Pycelle says you are gifted in languages, in addition to mathematics, you possess an unusual aptitude for the study of history and politics—”

He cut him off, “I assume that this is a position that would require subtlety,” he gestured to himself, “I assure you _this_ is quite difficult to disguise.”

Varys shrugged, “Or the perfect cover.”

“My father was the Hand to the old King. My sister is engaged to the current King. I am too well-known—”

“Pycelle did say you had an ego,” Varys said.

“Well, I just—”

“Not all intelligence is sending messages from some basement in Mereen. Someone has to be here to receive those messages.”

“A secretary? You want me to be a secretary?”

Varys leaned forward, “Mr. Lannister, you are in a unique position. You are clever, you have access to, well, everything frankly, unfettered because no one—”

“Because no one takes me seriously. I am _insignificant_.”

“Be that as it may, you are not perceived as a threat. Though,” Varys studied him for a moment, “You could be, I imagine. If so inclined.” He continued, “You don’t seem to care who knows what company you keep—you live without shame—”

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

“—in essence, the perfect man for the job,” Varys drained the last of his wine, “Think on it, my lord. You would be doing your country a great service.”

\--

He takes it in the end. Two days later, he calls Varys in the middle of the night, from a phone booth on the corner outside The Cinnamon Wind, watching Satin and Shagga twirl drunkenly about a lamppost.

The first thing they do is scrub his name.

By the time winter has come, all his mail is from Varys and all of it goes to Hugor Hill in a post box in Yun Kai.

\--

She is everywhere. If not on Baelish’s arm—

“Like a daughter,” Baelish says whenever asked, leans over to pinch her cheek, “Like the daughter I never had.”

\--then she is elbow-linked with Margaery—

“The sister I never had,” Margaery crows, “Aren’t you, darling?”

Everywhere. She is everywhere he is.

\--

Her brother is a traitor. In meetings, Varys calls him the Young Wolf.

Went mad after their father was murdered.

It was said that he screamed when he heard about his father. That he locked himself away in his father’s study—hid from his mother, from his wife, from the rioters smashing bottles and windows in the streets—for three days. Then he emerged. Called the whole phone tree of Northern nationalists—the Greatjon, the Karstarks, the Reeds. Brought them together for a meeting. Wrote a manifesto.

 _The time to free the North is now_ , the boy had read out on the radio, _they have taken our leaders and slaughtered them, they have taken our rights and broken them, they have taken our pride and trampled on it._

It has been going for months now, the bombings. Bombs at radio masts and in mailboxes, government buildings and hotels. Oldtown, White Harbor, Wintertown, all paved with crushed glass.

“They’re moving further South,” Varys said, at Margaery and Joffrey’s engagement party, “Every day they get closer to King’s Landing. Gods help us if the Essosi reach out.”

\--

Every day, he gets seven newspapers. One for each kingdom. Sansa is in all them. The first six, she is in the background of the society pages. Blurred, the shades of her face built from pinpricks of ink, the glamorous ghost that shadows Margaery.

But the Northern ones scream her name.

LOST PRINCESS BEATEN AT JOFFREY’S HAND

A MOTHER’S PLEA: BRING OUR GIRLS HOME

KING ROBB DEDICATES MEMORIAL TO FATHER; CALLS FOR RETURN OF HIS SISTER

The pictures in those ones are of Sansa, too. Old ones. A teenaged Sansa hanging on her brother’s arm, laughing with a school mate, the formal portrait of the six Stark children the New Dawn before King Robert’s death.

Robb, he knew, and Sansa, of course. The next eldest brother, Jon, had been in the Night’s Watch—disappeared if he remembered, oh, yes, that had been what brought Ned Stark down South in the first place. To plead with Jon Arryn to send search planes, men, they were frantic, he said, frantic to find him. Arryn was away, on holiday—and well, the effort had ended with the arrest.

But the three little ones—

In the portrait, Sansa has the youngest, Rickon, on her lap. The rumor was that he was dead. The other one too. Brandon. They had disappeared after Robb’s announcement, during a police raid on Winterfell, when Robb was not at home. The girl was a particular mystery. Arya. He had been surprised to find her not at the Red Keep, his understanding had always been that she had been living with her sister while she was at school. He had tried to ask Baelish, but he had been waved off—

“Boarding school—bit wild, that girl.”

He asked Varys.

“Nobody knows.”

“Not even you?”

“They couldn’t find her after the arrest. Trust me, my birds searched. She had just vanished. Baelish puts about that she’s away in some school in Dorne, but that’s to save face, there’s no record of her there.”

“False name?”

Varys shrugged, “Or she’s dead.”

He spends an inordinate amount of time studying the newspaper printings. The Sansa he sees there—loose-hair, loose-limbed—is a stranger.

There is one that fascinates him above all.

She sits on a dock. Head tossed back. Full skirt. Bare shoulders. Broad smile. Toes dipped in the water. The caption says: ‘Princess Sansa on vacation with her brothers at White Harbor.’

He stares at it for a long time. Cuts it out.

That night, there is a party. He watches her from across the room. She’s thinner than she was. Beehive. Waxy red lips. Cigarette holder pinched between gloved fingers. He watches her as she places a hand on Dontos’ shoulder, says something in Margaery’s ear that makes the other girl laugh.

The next morning, he pins the picture onto the wall labelled _Suspects._

\--

On weekends, he sleeps in. It is the only time he sleeps. Insomnia is a habit of the court really. The festivities end in the early hours of the morning almost every night and there is no expectation that anyone will be up again before afternoon tea.

The mornings are for the staff to clear away the night before. Reset chairs. Clear glasses. Empty ash trays.

But there is a morning when he wakes anyway.

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

Groans. Tosses. Turns. Decides to get up anyway.

He walks the halls of the Red Keep. He has not seen the Keep by daylight these many months. It makes the ancient bones of the castle more prominent somehow, the whole building more disjointed, an accident of willful kings.

He does not know where he is going until he arrives in the library.

She is everywhere he is.

“Oh, hello,” she says, a little shyly.

He has not spoken to her, alone, since that first night. She looks different—she is in trousers, for one—but it is the light, too, the windows here are high and stream white sunshine. She looks different, younger, in the morning. He can see the full moon of her face, not obscured by the inconstancy of dim party lights.

“Hello,” he says, “I am sorry, most everyone is—”

“Asleep, yes,” she says.

A beat.

Then, “Care to sit, Lord Lannister?”

It wakes him a little, “Yes, yes, please.”

He takes the seat across from her. Gestures, a little awkward, to the book in her lap, “And what are you reading?”

“Oh,” she says, a little shy, “ _Florian and Jonquil_.”

“Poetry?”

“Yes,” she says, fingers the spine.

“Do you re—”

“I stu—”

He smiled a little, “No, my apologies, you go first, my lady?”

She shook her head, “I was just going to say that I studied literature at the Citadel.”

He knows.

She went on, “That’s where I met Margaery actually.”

He knows that, too.

“Did she study Literature as well—”

“No, History of Art. Well, after she tried Languages.”

Now, _that_ he had not known.

“You went to the Citadel, didn’t you?”

He nods, “Yes, Mathematics and History. Long before your time I can assure you. Last autumn.”

“The campus must have been lovely—with all the colors,” she says lamely.

He cannot help but smile, “Yes, it was.”

“It was gorgeous in summer, too. I was only there three terms but I quite liked, you might remember it, the ruins—”

“The Isle of Ravens.”

“Yes,” she grinned, “That’s it. Can you imagine? All the news in the world sent by ravens?”

Actually, he can.

They speak a little more after that. Mostly about the Citadel. She had only been there for three terms, as she said, had left after Joffrey’s proposal for an education of an entirely different kind, but she had a remarkable memory of the place all the same.

Most of what she tells him, he knows. Some of it, like Margaery’s preference for rose oil or the name of Joffrey’s steward, he doesn’t though.

It is Margaery who interrupts them, striding into the room, looking surprisingly fresh-faced in riding pants and jacket, “Sansa, darling, are we—oh, Uncle Tyrion!”

He rose, “My apologies, Lady Margaery, I have bored your lady-in-waiting long enough.”

Sansa protested, “Oh no, Lord Lannister—”

He smiled, “I will see you both tonight I hope?”

Margaery nodded, “Of course, Uncle Tyrion. Looking forward to it.”

As he leaves, he can hear Margaery laughing, “Sansa! You naughty girl—alone with the Imp!”

He returns to his room, finds a pencil and a pad of paper, jots down everything she said.

\--

His first assignment is called Operation Honeycomb. It goes well, better than anyone expected.

He comes back to King’s Landing during a lashing winter rainstorm and heads directly to Varys’ townhouse off the Street of Seeds.

They sit, in the firelight of Varys’ parlor, with snifters of Arbor Gold and cigars.

“So, what next?” Tyrion says, fizzing with glee and pride and—

“You go back to Yun Kai next week.”

“Yes, but shall we tell the King?” He feels boyish, young and joyful, _full,_ in the way he hasn’t in years.

Varys shrugged, “No.”

“But—”

Varys’ eyes are flinted now, watching him. He sets down his glass, “You have done well, my lord, with the task you have been given. But this is a silent profession. We serve the realm, not any one king. We are the one who contain the chaos, keep it at bay,” he looked him up and down, “A small man can cast a long shadow. But shadows we must remain.”

\--

It is six weeks after he pins her picture up on his wall that Daenerys Targaryen takes Yun Kai and Bronn is called home to reassess.

They meet at Chataya’s for a drink. Back corner. Low lights. Two beers.

“I could’ve stayed, I was fine,” Bronn grumbled, “Be harder to get back in now that I’m out.”

Tyrion shrugged, “With Jorah found out—”

“Jorah went mad and had the balls to fall in love with the queen so I’m really not missing him.”

“Well—”

“I swear to all the Seven, if you make it all about you and Shae, I will actually knife you,” Bronn groaned, “Very different. You fucked an informant, I know—” at Tyrion’s face, said comfortingly, “Well, we’ve all done it, mate, and she _was_ supposed to be your girlfriend, might as well have—unfortunately for you, turned out she was a double, you turned her in. Not the same as proposing marriage to an enemy queen.”

“He _proposed_?”

Bronn nodded, a little gleefully, “He did. Then, when she said no, _confessed._ Got himself arrested. I always said he was a fucking idiot.” 

They sat for awhile longer. Then Tyrion said, “I think it’s the Stark girl. The mole. I think it’s her.”

“I thought you were narrowing in on Baelish or Baratheon or whoever.”

“I was. But there’s something _about_ —”

“It’s her tits.”

“No, I’m serious, Bronn,” he said, “Think about it—her entire family is an enemy to the state, so motive,” ticked off his fingers, “She’s still managed to ingratiate herself with the Tyrell girl—”

“Now _that’s_ definitely related to her tits.”

“—she’s everywhere, discreet, technically disgraced so no one pays her any mind, even if she has Margaery’s ear, access to Baelish’s things—”

“Does the timing even work? Eddard Stark is arrested, popped off, Jon Arryn comes back from holiday to deal with the fall-out. Is killed two months later. Margaery comes back for the funeral, seduces Joffrey. And then and only then was her engagement broken off and Baelish was instructed to manage her affairs. She’d have to have been turned, trained—”

“Unless it’s still Baelish and he’s been working at her since her father’s arrest, that’s not an unreasonable timeline. Have the Queen herself be a double agent? That would be a treat for the Essosi. The Queen’s closest friend? That’s a close second.” 

Bronn shrugged, “You have no proof, mate, and without that—” he didn’t finish, drained his drink instead, “Gods, do you think Chataya would let me try one of her new girls?”

\--

The day that the High Septon’s period of mourning was lifted, Cersei arrives, by private car, in crimson.

\--

The geometry of the court changes.

Cersei drapes herself, leonine, on the velvet couch in the parlor. Flirts with poor cousin Lancel. Flatters Margaery’s own father. Makes Joffrey sit with her, pets his hair, calls him ‘my boy.’

He has to stop himself from grinning when Pod drops the papers on his desk two days later and the front page is a picture of Margaery. Hat. Veil. Tailored suit. Chignon. Pressing kisses into the hair of orphans.

It goes on like this for two months. Changed venues, shifting tea times, comments slung like arrows, and Margaery in the paper, at hospitals, at orphanages, at war memorials, every single day.

Sansa’s there, too. Always shadowing.

So, after the Feast of the Maiden, when the whole court descend the steps of the Great Sept, the lords and ladies stand about Cersei like sentinels and the people lining the streets throw roses, kisses, rice, confetti, well wishes all at Margaery’s feet.

\--

Cersei does not like Sansa. She makes that immediately clear. He is not quite sure why; not sure it is relevant in the end. But his sister hates the girl with a passion.

It is a passion that gives permission.

He has always known that there was some rot in the boy’s bones. Ever since he was a child.

Margaery had been good for him. A distraction. But nothing, nothing at all, not wine, not women, not the whole of King’s Landing calling his name, can replace a mother’s approval. And, by the Gods, does Cersei approve of _this_.

It begins small.

Sansa is suddenly no longer an attendant in Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding.

“Well, it was odd, wasn’t it?” Cersei says to him over breakfast, “I mean, can you imagine having your leftovers standing at the altar with you? Besides, the business with her _father_. I mean, _really_.”

It escalates slightly.

She is moved from her rooms in the Maidenvault, rooms next to Margaery, ends up living in rooms next to—well, no one can seem to figure where except that they are in the near to the servants’ quarters.

Joffrey spends parties mocking her father. Her mother. Her brothers. They all watch—even Margaery, even Baelish, no one wants to be the next Ned Stark—all watch him strip her before the court, lash her with insults.

She sits in her ballgowns, her beehive hair, lacquered lips, sips wine impassively, flicks ash from the end of her cigarette, lights a new one as she goes, stares at the floor.

\--

He has a revelation in the middle of the night. He is at the office still, listening to Petyr Baelish coo nonsense to Lysa Arryn over the phone, when he suddenly—

She is everywhere. Everywhere he is and then some.

He has to stand atop Pod’s desk to do, has to shuffle awkwardly over chairs, stubs his toes on the things hidden in the office’s dark corners. He unwinds all the red string, rewires it—

Renly Baratheon’s poetry society. Petyr Baelish’s new lover. Margaery’s ears and eyes.

Margaery remains the brightest thing at court, red comet sailing, blinding. Cersei burns, too, like some breed of dying star.

But the nucleus, the silent center, is Sansa Stark.

\--

They are having a dinner party one evening, _just the family,_ Margaery purrs. Somehow that also includes Sansa and Baelish. It had been blessedly uneventful through the cocktails and the soup course. News of Daenerys Targaryen’s recent conquest in Mereen has been sobering for them all.

Until Joffrey has a third glass of _something_ , looks _impossibly_ like Robert when he drinks, and asks—

“So, your brother, is it true that he lets his dog fuck his wife?”

The whole room seizes. Margaery says, soothingly, “Darling, have you tried the potatoes—”

But Joffrey waves her off.

Sansa, as usual, does not answer. Takes a sip of water. Roasted pigeon grows cold on everyone’s plates.

“I asked you a question.”

Sansa still did not answer. Stared straight ahead, past Mace Tyrell’s head.

“I asked you a fucking question.”

Something beats in his chest. He has seen rage like this in other men, lightning-brittle.

Sansa still does not answer.

“You fucking bitch—”

The slap rings out like a gunshot.

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

Except for the turn of her head, there is nothing new in Sansa’s face.

“What are you doing?” he is up, before he even _thinks_ of what it is he is doing, he is up and he is shouting, “What are you doing?”

Joffrey sneers at him, calls him imp, calls him demon monkey, calls him a thousand things. Runs in the background like a spinning record. The boy would not dare to do more. For all that he is a fool, there is something animal in the boy, something primal, that scents, has always scented, the danger in his uncle, knows it and fears it, too.

“My lady,” he says, walks from the table, offers his hand, “My lady, I will take you back to your rooms.”

She looks at his hand, looks at his face, looks to everyone about the table, silent like blank-faced dolls.

She looks to him. He can see every part of her face. Sees her stare at his hand, like she’s trying to fathom something from it. She takes it.


	2. the border of reality is crowded most any place, where a myth can be a public dream (oh, see what you discover in the feeling of the elemental call)

Her rooms are near the cellars, right above where the dragon skulls are kept. He has seen the rooms in the Maidenvault, remembers them from when Cersei was engaged to Robert. Damask curtains. Canopied bed. Lysene carpets. Flowers on every table, every mantle.

Sansa’s rooms are not like that at all.

They are simple. White walls. Blue cotton curtains. Unfashionable couch. No pictures. Few books. A couple of half-full ash trays. He sees her bedroom, just beyond the door left ajar, bed made, white linens.

It looks like his rooms in Yun Kai.

“Do you need anything, my lady?” he asks her.

“No, no,” she says. She had been silent on the walk back, a little dazed. She looks like a princess lost now, in her purple taffeta, she sighs and sinks onto the couch, fiddles with the hook of her bracelet. He can see the wine-mark on her cheek. It won’t bruise.

He turns to go.

“Lord Tyrion,” she says, suddenly.

He turns back.

“Yes?”

She smiles a little, “Thank you.”

\--

The Northern paper arrives two days later. It contains every word of that dinner party, exactly, precisely as it was.

The picture above it is one that he hadn’t even seen, from a night he didn’t even know about. Joffrey and Margaery and Sansa and some others at a dance club, then grainy, shot through a long-distance lens, Joffrey pressing Sansa up against a wall, in the alleyway outside, hand about her throat.

\--

It did not take him long to ink an X in red pen across Mace Tyrell’s face, unpin it from his wall of suspects. Varys concurs. Leaves Renly, Baelish, and Sansa. 

The yellow envelopes get thicker every week. Court gossip, private diary entries, unpublished press releases, all jumbled together. Varys has his little birds working overtime.

He is, too. Slipping from parties to other wings of the Keep, to offices, ruffling through correspondence, inserting his letter remover into envelopes, extracting correspondence. Scanning calendars for poorly dried invisible ink.

Renly and Baelish have spiderwebs spanning the wall, all their allies, enemies, sources of income, sympathies, news statements, private appointments, financial statements. Paper. Ink.

Sansa’s lines are all gossamer threads. Friendships. Flirtations.

“Nothing that will stand up in a court of law,” Bronn concludes.

He protests.

“Nothing,” Bronn says, “You have nothing, Tyrion.”

\--

He wonders about her and Baelish. Though, he supposes, they all do.

Baelish announces that he will marry her aunt, Jon Arryn’s widow, Lysa. It is terribly quick but between Joffrey’s engagement and Ned Stark’s death and Robb Stark’s rebellion and the dread of Daenerys Targaryen sitting beneath it all—it is hardly worth gossiping about. 

He watches them, one night from his box at the ballet, the two of them—Lysa’s not there, which is odd, but she’s always been a recluse—they look like father and daughter. She’s in some strapless black gown, clearly new and in season, unlike most of her clothes, crystals in her hair like a constellation. She’s watching the performance—a sea of white frothing maidens all gathered around a twirling Jonquil—

It’s her nameday, he remembers, realizes, pulls the fact from some strange recess of his mind, some fact typed in a file somewhere on his desk.

Today was her name day.

It clicks together as he watches them, the careful way that Petyr tucks her fur stole about her, guides her through, fetches her wine, and smiles at her. This was his gift to her. This night out of the Keep in a new dress, probably dinner, somewhere alone, away from the society pages—he’s sure that Baelish knows _just_ the place.

 _Is he making you?_ He wants to ask. _Did he convince you that this was the best way? Does he make you befriend all those lords and ladies? Keep Margaery close? Pocket papers? Did he convince you that this was justice?_

\--

It’s the little things that keep her tacked up there. Never-drunk wineglasses. Baelish’s lips at her ear. Margaery’s hand at her arm.

One is the way she plays cyvasse.

People call her for a game.

She shakes her head, laughs, _I’m never any good, no, no way, what about cards, oh, alright._

She always loses.

\--

There is newsreel leaked from Essos. Dark wings against the sky.

Catches them all by surprise. Even Varys. Even him.

He watches it on the evening news, pins the panicked newspaper clippings next to Sansa Stark’s shining face.

\--

Here’s the thing about the way she plays cyvasse though.

She shouldn’t lose. Not the way she plays in the beginning. The way she builds her defenses, the way she positions her attacks, gives them a good fight—

Until the last, she always makes one mistake, always in the final throes of the game, she’ll move one piece, her dragon, her heavy horse, leaves the king open to strike down.

\--

He’s watching her all the time now. All the damn time.

Baelish, oh, he is circling that man, too. No one can live without a paper trail and he and Bronn are scenting his.

But he is watching _her._ Nightly. He gets the sense that she knows. The way her eyes find him—yes, she knows that he is watching. Watches him right back.

Like the moon, he thinks, a little madly, drunk at a party, watching her dance with Dontos, in the valley that Cersei and Margaery have carved between them.

Like the moon, he thinks, more soberly, in the morning, pulling and pushing at the tides, in silence.

\--

Bronn has a point. About her tits, anyway.

She’s a lovely girl. Truly.

He’s watching her, watching her for magpie fingers, for a camera stashed in a pocket, for all those things—

But he’s watching her legs, too, the way they cross under her dresses, and the curve of her neck—

He wants her, he realizes. He wants to finish the operation, yes, but he wants her, too.

\--

There is a garden party to celebrate Margaery’s birthday. The whole affair is a watercolor splash.

White wine. Orange juice with a little something extra. Cucumber sandwiches.

Margaery is twirling throughout the crowd, a pastel blur. Cersei is, too.

Sansa finds him by the cake, watching the proceedings, well, watching Renly Baratheon talk to Loras Tyrell really, chewing a stick of stuffed celery.

“Hello, my lord.”

“My lady.”

They’ve been doing that. More and more. Seeking out the other one at these things. Like they are allies. It’s not a friendship. Not yet.

He looks her up and down. The dress she’s chosen reminds him of the one in the picture on his wall.

“You look nice,” he says.

She glances down, smooths her skirt, “It’s one of Margaery’s.”

Then Margaery calls her over for something to do with presents and he is alone.

He feels Varys before he sees them. Then, hears him, “My little birds told me you were befriending the Stark girl.”

They watch her together, carefully adjusting Margaery’s hat for a photograph with Joffrey.

He took another bite of celery, “I think she’s involved.”

Varys raised his eyebrows, “Do you?”

Sansa stepped aside. Let Joffrey sidle up next to Margaery.

“Yes,” paused, “And if I’m wrong and she isn’t one of theirs, she should be one of ours.”

“Do you have proof?”

The camera explodes with light. Margaery laughs. Charming.

He sighs a little, “Not yet. Just connections.”

Varys clucked, “Until you do—”

“I know,” he shakes his head, “It’s a feeling.”

Sansa smiles at him from across the garden. The way her hair fails when she does—if he took a picture _right now—_ he could replicate it, the one in his office.

“It’s either Renly or Baelish,” Varys said firmly, “We’ll deal with the Stark girl later.”

\--

It’s Renly.

The fool makes the mistake of sending a message from the King’s Landing telegram office to Barristan Selmy, expatriate defector, paid for on his personal account. He’s had access to Renly’s financial records for months now, gets bank statements delivered rolled up in a napkin with his coffee.

Tyrion alerts Varys.

“He must realize his mistake,” Tyrion says, “He’ll panic.”

They wait. Tyrion waits up, three nights in a row. Listening in from his office. Silence. Silence. Silence. Then, in the early hours of the fourth day, Renly calls Loras.

“Love,” he says, “I have to go away.”

“Where?” Loras says sleepily, “Why?”

“Just business.”

“How long are you going to be gone?”

“A long time, honey.”

Loras was confused, “But where?”

“Essos.”

“Essos! But—business? I don’t—”

“There’s a plane, leaving from Blackwater Reach in two days—”

“Two days? Renly—”

Tyrion finds the plane. Finds the time it leaves. Let him say goodbye to Loras that night, let him think he’s gotten away with it. They arrest him on the tarmac. Send his own brother to do it. They say Stannis spat in his face as they dragged him away.

\--

That leaves Baelish and Sansa. All of the roads outlined on his office wall still point to Sansa. Bronn shakes his head, Pod says nothing but raises his eyebrows, but he remains resolute.

\--

He gets two snifters of Arbor Gold this time.

“To the hero of Operation Blackwater,” Varys says, knocks their glasses together.

“It’s not done,” he pinches the bridge of his nose, “Baelish—the Stark girl—”

“Yes,” Varys says, “You’ll stay here for the time being.”

\--

He just doesn’t think that it’s unintentional. Leaving the king open like that. It is like she is playing the game for true and then before she can finish the deed—acquiesces.

\--

Renly’s arrest rattles everybody.

_Did you know?_

_No, he was always strange though._

_I never would have guessed._

Then, of course, a natural progression:

_Who’s next?_

\--

The hardest thing about being one of them is that there is no one to show yourself to. He remembers when his first operation was about to close, when he had gotten the documents he had wanted, he had _done_ it—all he had wanted to do was tell the Wise Master who had trusted him so foolishly:

_It was me. It was me. It was me. Know my name and fear it._

\--

They are left, the dregs of a party.

Watching as everyone else stumbles out drunk.

Soon it is just them.

He’s been waiting for her. But she’s not moving. She seems tired tonight, a little less on.

Her brother is on the run now, he knows, disappeared into some hiding hole, avoiding the police, the army. The hunted wolf, they are calling him.

He decides to strike as the last of Margaery’s cousins trip out.

“Would you like to play a game of cyvasse, my lady?” he asks.

She looks at him curiously, “It is late—”

“Not so late,” he shrugs.

“I am not very good at it—”

He smiles a little, “You and I both know that that is not true.”

There’s a quasar in her eye, “Alright. Though I am sure you’re wrong.”

\--

He convinces her, in the end, and they set out the board, battered screen between them. Arrange their pieces.

He moves first. She moves second.

She takes her time, doesn’t speak while she shuffles her pieces.

He captures her high horse. She shrugs, surges left, takes his dragon.

“Fuck,” he says, hadn’t even seen her coming, “My apologies, my lady.”

She waves it away and waits for him to shift his king back, move a mountain.

“You’re quite good,” he says.

She smiles, “I’m not really, my lord. I always lose.”

Then she takes one of his knights, plucks it right off the board. 

\--

They play for hours.

“Who taught you?” he asks her.

She looks up, suddenly, she had been biting her lip, studying the board. He had boxed her elephant in and—

“My brother,” she says, rolls her shoulders. 

“Robb?”

She shook her head, “Jon.”

She abandons the elephant, moves her trebuchet instead.

\--

They are locked in a stalemate for nearly half an hour. It is his turn, he is glaring at the board, before he realizes that she has won the game.

He sighs, flicks his own trebuchet to some useless spot, gives up the fight.

But then—

She moves one of her dragons, the one protecting the king, leaves the piece open to his catapult—

“Don’t,” he says, stays her hand with his, “You said you would play for real.”

“I said—”

Rolls his eyes, feigns condescension, “Take him. I won’t turn you into my nephew if you win a boardgame, my lady.”

She raises an eyebrow, hesitates. Then moves a spearman from behind, knocks his king to the ground.

\--

“What do you think of Daenerys Targaryen?”

It is three weeks after their first game. They play now whenever they have the chance, by firelight, on the weekend mornings in the library. All accidental, of course. That is the game they are playing now.

It is hard to not think of her picture on his wall. Hard not to think of this as a testing. The beginning of recruitment.

He hums, “Very beautiful.”

She rolls her eyes, “I’m sure.”

“What do _you_ think of Daenerys Targaryen?” Balances on the tip of the question.

She shrugs, “I like her clothes.”

He smiles, “I’m sure.”

\--

He broaches the subject one day, manages to make it sound natural, “So, is it true that your uncle Petyr started the Mockingbird lunch club?”

The Mockingbird was a club, a glorified brothel really, but they had a lunch club there, a secret fraternity, a place for the best, brightest men of King’s Landing to release a little tension. It was also where Renly Baratheon had been introduced to Barristan Selmy, where he had been radicalized, turned. He’d been trying to get a membership for months.

She laughs a little, “Oh, I don’t know. That’s a rumor.”

Knocks over his catapult.

He protests, “I mean—”

“He doesn’t tell me things like that!” she exclaims.

“Then, what does he tell you? He’s always there, whispering in your ear!” It still sounds like teasing, “He’s always so dreadfully _dull—_ ”

He takes two of her knights in one play.

“Hush now! He’s a very kind man once you get to know him.”

“Is he? Because—”

She turns suddenly serious, “He loves me.”

It makes him terribly sad to hear her say it. Because he knows what happens at the Mockingbird, is building a picture of Baelish that is not kind or loving or anything like that in the _least—_

“Pay attention,” she says, “Your elephant is unprotected.”

He lets her collect it.

Then he knocks over her king, “Defeated in six, my lady.” 

\--

She calls him _my lord_ most days. But when she is truly thoughtless, excited, animated—it’s rare but there are good days, too, even at the end of the world—she says _Tyrion._

Sometimes she says _my friend_ like _you’ll just have to see, my friend,_ like it is just another way of shaping his name.

She’s sweet like that sometimes.

\--

He keeps waiting for the wolf, the same viciousness that stalks her brother, to surface. Never does. Not really. She can show her teeth, in a comment, a tossed away glance. But she never bites.

\--

Falling in love with her seems, after a while, inevitable.

\--

She probes at him, too. Is feeling him out. Be it for recruitment, be it that he is her target as much as she is his, he does not know.

She is complaining one morning, “All of Blackwater Bay is _filthy._ All the sewers in the city—”

“Hey now, I am in charge of the sewers,” he says it, takes advantage of her distraction to move a mountain dangerously close to her catapult.

She laughs a little, “Sure.”

He laughs but there is a sharpening in his chest, “I would be careful who’s work you insult.”

“You’re not in charge of the sewers!” It is an exclamation, but the laughter is gone from her eyes.

“I am Western Manager for Infras—”

Her eyes narrow, not unkind, not even clever, just truthful, “We both know that that’s not true.”

He does not know what to do next but she moves breezily by him, collects his piece, and she says, sighing, teasing back in her voice, “And you left your dragon unprotected, stop making this _so easy,_ Tyrion.”

\--

He keeps waiting, too, for her to give the game away. But that morning is the closest she ever comes. And really, all she did, in the end, was show him that she was playing at all.

\--

It all changes, of course it does.

Changes so all the things they’ve been edging—the danger, the betrayal, the love, all things that make up end-times—now seem like spun sugar days.

\--

They find out that Robb Stark took a meeting with Barristan Selmy. Had a phone call with Daenerys. Received cash in exchange for Northern loyalty.

It is Joffrey who sets the order, he hears from Varys, Joffrey who tells them to use wildfire.

But the plan?

The plan to lure Robb Stark and his mother and his pregnant wife to parley, to dangle Sansa and Arya and the boys in front of them like meat, knowing the hunger stamped in their bones, the plan to plant a bomb in their car—

That is marked with his father’s name.

\--

It is in all the papers. The plume of flame. Acrid mushroom cloud. Twisted metal. Burnt bones.

\--

Joffrey and his mother dress in crimson and gold at dinner that night. Margaery wears purple so dark it might be black in the right light but not _enough_.

She is there, too. In blue.

Joffrey crows and Joffrey laughs. Joffrey dances and sings along to the record they put on.

She lights cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. He’s watching her. Of course he is. And he has watched her so much that he can see the tremble in her hand, the unsteadiness in her fingers when she opens the matchbook.

Baelish puts his hand on her shoulder, brings her a drink. And Margaery kisses her cheek when she and Joffrey retire. But nobody wants to be the next Ned Stark.

The moment the King and his almost-bride retire, she is gone, too.

And he follows her. 

\--

He finds her. In the dark. He cannot see her, not really, just figured where she could be, where she would go.

The godswood is silent at night. He can only hear himself, upsetting the undergrowth. Then he can hear her.

He’s walked a path like this before.

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood. 

_I know,_ he wants to tell her, _I know that hollowness, I know what it is to have the hope gouged from you._

She is still in her evening gown, its hem trailed in mud and leaves, and she is knelt, bowed over, forehead to the earth, before the weirwood.

She sounds like she’s wounded. Like she’s been left for dead.

“Sansa—” he says. She stills but does not turn.

He goes to her. Hand hovers her back but he is too afraid to touch. But he can feel it, the warmth of her skin. She is shuddering, from the sobs, yes, but the cold, too. It is autumn now, the maesters have declared it so. It was foolish to come outside without a coat, he thinks in a distant dithering way. There’s something of a gentleman still left within him and so he slides off his own dinner jacket. It’s too small for her but her shoulders are narrow enough. He has to touch her to do it, brief press of his fingers on her arm. She reaches up and just catches them, just enough to get him to hesitate.

She surges up and then her arms are about his neck. It is muscle memory, the way he wraps his arms about her shoulders. The hand on her nape. The way he moves her head to the cradle of his shoulder. It is muscle memory: the dozen kisses he stacks on her hairline and kind things he murmurs to her.

He can feel her body against his, the shape of her against him. 

She’s wounded, yes, but not dead. Not yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...in other news, i started watching the queen's gambit


	3. and i know you had trouble with your heart bereft (it's hard to keep a lonely heart warm)

_Lone wolves die_ , that is what the court says, says as they watch Joffrey taunt her. _She’s next—the whole family wiped out in a year—how sad._

_She’ll cling to the King and his favor more now_ , they say that, too, _Joffrey is her only hope now._

Lone wolves are also the most dangerous, he thinks, pushed out to the edge. Nothing left to protect. That is when a wolf will come, that is when the wolf will savage you.

\--

After that night is the godswood, she never mentions her family again.

If she must talk about a time before the Red Keep, she says _when I was a girl_ as if she is some terribly different kind of thing now.

After that night in the godswood, there is a thing that cracks open between them. Touching. He is so starved for it. Hasn’t touched anyone, beyond handshakes, beyond accidental bumping on the street, since Shae.

Pathetic, unseemly, predictable, for a man like him, old and little, to be made into static by a woman like her, young and beautiful, touching his shoulder when she talks to him a party.

But they do touch now. During cyvasse, as part of their watchful revolutions at parties, meeting on accidental purpose in the godswood. It’s all too light to be real, like sighing instead of speaking, but it’s too frequent to be anything but intentional, like crossing glances across a dining table.

\--

The Northerners believe when someone dies that the earth consumes their spirit, absorbs flesh and blood, that there is divinity in the maggots and earthworms and tree roots that break down the dead. In the North, even the gods are hungry.

However, for the heroes, there is another world—a golden one. A place reserved for their heroes to feast and dance, an eternal summer palace, where winter will not come. 

He wonders if Robb Stark is there, ever even had a chance, there was no flesh of his left to offer up.

He wonders if _she_ thinks that’s where her family is, if they’re waiting there, if she will go there, too, when it is time for her.

\--

They still play together. But she plays more aggressively, messily. Wins faster, loses more frequently.

She is beautiful in her tragedy, hates to say it. But it is true. She looks _lyrical,_ spun from the tragedies she likes to read. He hates it, hates the pride he feels at seeing a gauntness no one else can.

“Sansa,” he tells her one night.

“Yes?” she says.

They are sitting the postbellum disarray of a cocktail party. Her skirts are spread. She sits, pretty and prim, on the edge of her armchair.

“You could—”

He is trying. It is less simple, he finds, when he can see her face, when they are indoors, away from the primeval sanctitude of the godswood. He sighs, goes again, “I would like to think we are friends—”

She smiles blandly, “Of course we are.”

“You could talk to me.”

She stiffens. He almost regrets saying it but—

“Could I?” she says lightly, moves a piece across the board. He doesn’t even notice which one. Then she says, looks at him, too, assessing, “And what, precisely, would you say? You only ever answer me in questions.”

“Why do you—”

She smiles sadly, “It’s your turn, my lord.”

\--

Jaime comes for the wedding. Tywin does, too, but they avoid each other at any occasion.

Jaime’s got a girl now, he knows, some woman from Tarth, had worked on aircraft during the war. Cersei calls her ugly, calls her a brute. She does not come to the wedding which Tyrion thinks is wise and not all at once—

Jaime sees him in his room. They laugh and joke and talk like brothers.

There’s a space between them though. A space that Tyrion can see, never sure if Jaime can.

He loves Jaime. Loves Jaime longer and better than he has loved any other. 

But Jaime does not know his name. It had been something he gave up when he left for Yun Kai. Burned it in anger, burned it because he had been sure that only Tysha could ever have known it for true.

Tyrion knows Jaime’s, though. Knows every shape of every letter of it.

Knows that leaving his girl at home, probably felt like kindness, knows it was actually a mistake.

Sees, even in the dark, with the court gathered outside at the rehearsal dinner to watch fireworks on the lawn, sees how Cersei drapes her arm around Jaime’s waist and leads him away.

He sees the way they look at each other, can almost hear the romance they tell each other at night, when there is no light, and they can hide the difference in their faces.

\--

He finds Sansa the night before the wedding. She is sitting apart. Everyone is in the center and she, for once, is on the outskirts.

“Hey,” he says by way of greeting.

“She looks good,” Sansa says, watching Margaery spin on the dance floor, “She looks like a queen.”

He touches her hand, “Better her than you, Sansa.”

She brushes his wrist and nods, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

\--

The Sept is frothing with lilies and baby’s breath and white roses and daisies. The bridesmaids, all nineteen of them, are all in tea-length frocks—pale yellow and blue and pink and green—and matching hats and gloves.

Joffrey is in military dress. Red jacket. Polished medals. White spats. Antlered crown. He looks kingly. Damn him.

He finds Sansa in the sea of humanity. Grey satin. Hair looped and braided and bowed and tied. Pearls. White gloves. Silver kitten heels. Silk purse.

She is with Petyr, Petyr and his new fiancé, her aunt Lysa. She is a little separate from the two of them, they are wrapped about each other as couples are, like two trees with the same roots, no space for a third.

\--

She waits for him, one night, waits for him in the hallway.

They are all playing cards, but he has gotten as much information as he was going to get from Lollys Stokeworth and was heading back to his room. She had retired unusually early, too, complained of a headache. But she’s there in the back way, the plain servants’ corridor that just leads—she’s there, just standing.

The hallway was silent. She was silent. Could not even hear the music from the other room.

It was a poorly lit passage—a few stuttering bulbs—her face was in shadow, could see the suggestion of it more than—

“Sansa—” it feels crude to split the silence but—

“Hi,” she says back.

She kneels. Extends her arm, too white, sickly white, in the bad light. He touches the tips of her fingers, slips their fingers together. He touches her first. But it is her who pulls. He simply follows. Steps. Hand slides up her shoulder and then she kisses him.

It is almost casual the way it happens, one fluid movement, like they’ve done it a half a hundred times before. It is muscle memory, he thinks as his eyes roll back and close, being in love is just muscle memory.

She kisses like someone not used to it, someone who hasn’t been kissed very much in their life, certainly not by someone who wants them, someone who wants her as desperately as he wants her.

She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, it seems, they flutter about his shoulders, graze his neck, his cheek, pinch his lapels, like she’s checking that he’s still going to be there, that all of him will be there, when she opens her eyes.

\--

The Northerners believe that the moon is made of ice. That’s what makes it silver, that’s what makes it shine.

But she’s very warm, he finds, all of her is so warm, her mouth, her arms, her breasts, the corner of her neck where his hand rests, where he draws her deeper to him.

\--

She pulls back, mostly for air, to breathe. It’s hard to see the details of her face, even this close. So, he traverses her geography with his hand—runs his finger down her nose, across her cheek, edges down her ear, thumbs her jawline, brushes the length of her throat with his knuckles.

He wants to ask her why, why tonight, why this hallway, were you waiting, I’ve been _waiting_ , how did you—but he just does not want to know. Does not want to take down her picture from his wall. Does not want to circle it, make that call either.

He kisses her this time, listens to the electric drone of the lights and the sounds she is making in the back of her throat, sticking arrows into the thick quiet.

\--

He and Tysha had never talked about it, what to do if one of them died, whether they would love again. They hadn’t even thought of it—the possibility of being without the other at all, let alone the decade and a quarter he has been alone.

She had been a kind woman. The kindest, he is still quite sure, that he ever did meet. She would have been sweet to Sansa, if she was alive and here with him, she would have tried to be her friend. She wasn’t the jealous sort, decides that she would not have minded him loving again.

She wouldn’t have fit in here, he thinks, not for the first time. She had been a common girl, a shopkeeper’s daughter, at the Citadel on scholarship. _My father’s pride_ , she had said.

Wool skirts. Pilled cardigans. Darned socks. No rings except the one he gave to her.

The nicest thing she had ever worn was that bathing costume and he had taken that off her as soon as he could manage.

She had shone that night, though, hadn’t needed clothes at all, draped in silver, the moon and the water throwing jewels against her skin. He had told her that, told her— _Honey, you look like a princess. Like a girl from a song._

She had laughed at him even if he could tell that she liked it. _I like the way you say my name,_ she sighed, just as silly as him.

_What should I do?_ He wants to ask her, but he cannot hear her reply, too far away again, covered under seething waves.

\--

She leaves him in the hall. Leaves him touching his lips, disappears through a doorway, one he knows goes to the servants’ quarters where she now lives.

\--

Two weeks before the wedding, three days before she kisses him, five weeks after her family is killed:

They are walking through the godswood, almost at Blackwater Reach.

“You were married, weren’t you?” Sansa asks.

Saltwater. Bare shoulders. Striped bathing costume. Sun cream.

_I love you, Tyrion. I love your lips. I love your voice, and the words you say to me, and how you treat me gentle. I love your face—_

“And how did you hear that?” he says lightly.

“Cersei told me,” she says, “Last night.”

He wants to ask how it came up, what could have possibly possessed—but he cannot quite manage it.

“Yes,” he says, “Yes, I was. Briefly. At university.”

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

_It’s better this way, Tyrion._

_Honestly, Tyrion, Jaime’s right. She was a nasty little gold digger._

Then, unprompted, “She died. Car accident.”

Black ice, they told him, lost control, slammed into a tree. _No, the face is unrecognizable, so sorry, sir._

There’s a file on that, too. Unmarked folder sits beneath all the official stamped reports on his desk. Newspaper clippings predicting unseasonably warm weather. Pictures of the wreckage. Autopsy report. A fiscal report nicked from his father’s files showing five thousand dragons paid to ‘GC.’

“I am sorry,” Sansa says, touches his shoulder, “I am sorry for your loss.”

\--

She is still in the middle of it all. He can almost see his railroad map running from her as she waves and greets the people entering the sanctuary—it’s a track made of her kindnesses, really—that one whose button she had sewn on when it popped off at tea with the Queen Mother, that one she spoke with last month at Margaery’s bridal shower, that one knew her mother, it goes on. He’s one, too, he realizes, the one she plays cyvasse with in the dead of night, the one she kisses in back halls.

She looks to him, finds his face in the crowd, without effort. It’s as if she knows where he is in orbit all the time.

\--

His wedding took place in Bronn’s mother’s front parlor. Satin grabbed a septon, a septon he _knew,_ an always dubious thing. Her father had died by then and so Shagga had led her through the maze of armchairs while Bronn’s mother had played an old recording of some Maiden hymns on the broken-down record player.

She wore the dress she kept to wear to the sept—yellow or blue, a patterned thing, he can’t remember now—and Satin had attempted something in her hair with a curling iron, some style they had seen in a magazine. They had taken the flowers sitting on the dining table, stuck one wilting daisy in his buttonhole and bound the rest with kitchen twine.

They cloaked each other with a mothballed mink coat and a trench coat two feet too long for him. The septon had raised his eyebrows, asked if they could do any better.

They had laughed at him, told him that it would cover them all the same. 

\--

Margaery is beautiful.

Scalloped lace. Juliet cap. Seed pearls. Veil at least ninety yards long.

Trumpets trill when she enters the sept, timpani rolls, and a whole choir of children sings that she is the Maiden come to life. In the light, filtering through colored glass, making the sept splinter into a thousand different fractals, it looks like it could be true.

\--

He wonders what she wanted for her wedding. What her plans had been before her father died. What music she would have chosen, what readings, what flowers.

They had started constructing a dress for her before Joffrey left her for Margaery. Burned all evidence—muslin form, sketches, the mannequin—when the King announced his new queen.

She would make a beautiful bride, he thinks.

\--

He should have given Tysha better. Should have married her good and proper in a sept, put it in the newspaper, invited the whole of the Citadel, eaten white cake instead of tea cookies, bought her a new gown—he had been so afraid then, so afraid of his father, so afraid of spending money just in case—

Hadn’t changed what happened. Of how when he rung to tell Tywin, they had shouted at each other until the line burst with static. How Tysha could hear everything, _whore, whore, whore,_ despite sitting across the room, how it had made her cry. Then—

Turpentine. Greenish lights. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

He is terrified with, of, for Sansa. But if he was—if they ever were—if it _could_ be more than secret, sudden embraces—he would do it right, he decides.

\--

The ceremony lasts two hours.

Open-carriage ride back. Cheering crowds. Flowers and rice and confetti. Bursting camera lights.

He has a camera, too, a matchbox one hidden in the sleeve of his jacket. He snaps photos discreetly, shimmies it up and down his sleeve with the tip of his wine glass. The Queen Mother’s dwarf brother is the last person anyone is watching.

He sees Varys. Salutes him across the way.

It is at dinner that it starts.

Eight courses: Melon wrapped in cured ham. Pumpkin soup with cream. Thin sliced apples and cheese. Greens drizzled in honey and walnuts. Poached salmon. Lemon sorbet and almonds. Roasted chicken. Cake with strawberries.

There is to be a performance, _oh lovely, sweetheart,_ Margaery sighs.

The dance floor is cleared, the band wheezes to silence, they set up a little stage on the dance floor, _so charming,_ Margaery says.

It begins.

It’s dwarves.

Suddenly too many eyes are on him. He tucks the camera away. Chews his dinner. Drinks his wine.

Then it becomes clear what this pantomime is going to reenact. The room of a thousand thinks as one, this is how the chaos begins. 

One stands on a milkcrate declares that he should be free. Bad Northern accent. One dressed as a dog thrusts against the arse of one in a dress. There are even explosions, done with miniature firecrackers. He looks to Baelish and Lysa Arryn, white-faced, he looks to Margaery, clutching Joffrey’s elbow. Nobody wants to be the next Ned Stark. 

He looks to Varys who shakes his head: _Don't you dare_.

He looks to her last. For once, she is not looking at him. Her eyes are fixed on the men rolling on the floor, pretending to fall like kings.

\--

When the whole affair ends, Cersei leads the applause, and the band starts back up again. The crowd swells, a little relief.

She moves with the rest, but she bypasses the crowd—it’s the way to the restroom he knows—but she brushes past him. Touches his shoulder. It takes him a moment but then he goes, too.

\--

He follows her, twenty or so paces behind, into the cellar where the dragon skulls are kept. He can hear the distant rumble, muffled din of the wedding, raging above them. Reminds him of being in a bomb shelter, huddling beneath Casterly Rock during the war.

She is sitting on the ground, deep in the jaws of Aegon’s beast, leaned up against the backwall. He can’t quite see here, not in this gloom.

Sits down next her.

“That was horrible,” she says, brushing back tears, “Horrible what they did.”

“I am sorry.”

“I just—” she shook her head.

He takes her hand. She starts a little but looks at him.

He kisses it.

She shudders a little. She does that sometimes when he touches her.

“Sansa—”

Her hand curls towards his so they’re actually clasping hands. Forces her fingers into the spaces between his, curls them all together so they’re like the knot that Margaery wrapped about Joffrey’s wrist that morning.

It makes him bold, them touching palm to palm, there’s something about being in the mouth of a dragon—

He reaches up and kisses her.

It’s like she had been waiting, the way she moves. All so automatic, so _ready_. Hands to his jaw, thumbs his cheekbones, her whole body urgent against his. He is slower than her but once he starts—he tugs her towards him, she is in his lap, her skirt blooming around them, his hands are running up and down her back, skirting to her belly, drawing to her breast, then neck, catching on the satin. She is in his lap and there’s a heartbeat there, vibrant life where their bodies’ borders cross.

\--

“Take me to bed,” she says finally, eyes closed, forehead pressed to his, “My apartments—they’re just up the stairs. Take me to bed.”

“Why?” He sounds like a child, asking, but she does not flinch. Knows he looks a fool, smeared with her lipstick. She glides her thumb across his lower lip. Leans in. Kisses him again. Just a touch, really.

She parts from him, “Because we’re the same, you and I,” she runs a finger down the curve of his ear, “The same,” she examines his face, the jagged way the gods assembled it, kisses his brow, “Same loneliness, same fear, same kindness.”

She is either the greatest triumph or greatest misstep of his career.

Regardless, she knows the letters of his name, his true name. And he just might know hers. He wants to anyway.

He nods. _Okay, okay, okay._

And she leads him up the stairs to her rooms, three steps ahead, leads him past the plain sitting room to the bed. She turns on no lights, says nothing. She sits on the very edge of the bed, grey skirts spread, a silhouette in the dark. He watches her, hesitant in the doorway.

She had clearly not planned this part.

Bites her lip, “I don’t—”

“I do.” He crosses then suddenly. He had been waiting, knows it as he moves, so automatic, so _ready_.

He can feel her, quivering. Runs his lips against her jaw. Reaches behind. Her dress is all buttons, easy enough to do, even in the dark. He thanks the gods for small miracles. When he is done has reached the top, he presses his hand into her naked upper back. Wide, hot. Like a star. She breathes through her nose.

“I feel like I do have to ask,” he breathes against her neck.

She is sliding her thighs together, making small noises at the brush of his other hand, his thumb, against her nipple, can feel it pebble through the layers of satin. 

“Yes,” she sighs, frames his face with her hands and pulls it up, her head tumbling forward, meets his mouth.

He breaks from kissing her, draws his hands up the length of her neck to cradle the back of her head, lets his fingers cord through her hair, says into the corner of her mouth, “Are you an Essosi spy?”

That pulls her back, she considers him, unsurprised, eyes shining in the lowlight.

_We are the same_ , he thinks. Still, he wonders what she sees.

Finally, she says thickly, “You won’t believe me. Whatever I say,” her hand skims down his chest, fingers slot into his belt, “So—why bother asking?”

“Because it matters—”

But the fingers of her other hand are pressed against his lips, “I really don’t think it does. Not right now.”

He makes a protesting sound, but she shakes her head, “I want to feel good. Don’t you?” she bends down, moves so she’s unbuttoning his shirt, kissing down as she opens him up, “You make me feel good.”

Tyrion knows when he’s being wooed, being seduced. This doesn’t feel like it at all. It feels like surgery, like he’s being taken apart, limb by limb, bare bone, naked veins.

He kisses her again, make her face level with his, even if it puts her neck at an awkward angle. She is smiling into it. She says again, “You make me feel good.”

And he knows, just knows it, that she’s not talking about the blood rushing, river-thick, between them.

He uses the edge of his teeth to write her name against her clavicle.

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

\--

He slips off the gown, strap by strap, peels it from her.

He tells her to lie back and she does.

She waits while he considers her, sprawled against her bed. There is only one window in her bedroom and the curtains are drawn except for one bar of steely light that lances across the bed. She looks half-song, bathing in it. It illuminates her, reforges her skin to silver, deepens her too, makes the shadow places of her body harder to find. The light pulls her closer, makes her easier to see, and pushes her farther away, reminded him vaguely of the Northern story of the poor man struck down for trying to steal the sky.

She is trembling.

“Adorable,” he tells her as he fingers the edge of her slip, woven with small bows.

He means it. He adores her.

She looks like she is about to cry, there is a splintering in her face, begins to say, “I shou—”

He hushes her, “It doesn’t matter, not right now. Whatever it is.”

She nods and reaches for him, says, “Okay.” Takes a breath to steady herself and he can see the exposed scaffolding of her bravery.

\--

She is skin-hungry, he can tell, can tell in the way she jolts against the rasp of his hand on her thigh, the bit-back hymning at the spread of gooseflesh he leaves in the wake of his fingers on her belly, the way her hands seem to always need to find purchase on his shoulders, his chest, his back.

She touches him _everywhere_. 

Pulls him up so his knees cage her waist, pulls him down so he can kiss _into_ her. Pushes her knees to spread wide, pushes up the hem of her slip. 

She calls him _baby_ when he kisses her cunt. _Baby,_ she declares to the ceiling as her feet push and flex against his shoulders, _yes, baby, baby, please, oh, baby._ Whispers it. Seems to ripple, deafening, in the quiet.

She comes with a hand in his hair, staccato hips, mouth gaping like she’s trying to swallow the shaft of silver light slanting across the sheets, like she’s gulping the moon.

He moves up her body, her legs butterflied and vulnerable. When he enters her, she reaches for his face, takes it between her hands. Her head tips back, lip caught between her teeth, cries out a little, but then as he begins to move, her eyes open, find his, and she says his name.

\--

After it is all said and done, they lie next to each other in the blue dark. Her face tucked against his shoulder. Hand splayed against his chest. Like a star. He stares at the ceiling. Hairline crack in the plaster. He sits up, though her hand stays heavy on his heart, reaches for a cigarette from the packet she keeps on the bedside table. Match flares, rush of fire, too bright. Lowers it so it crisps the end. Breathes in. Takes it from between his teeth. Puts it against her lips. She raises her head to take it, eyes on his. When she’s had a drag, he takes it back, balances it between his fingers. Taps ash onto her bed.

“Tyrion,” she says, voice charred.

He sucks on the cigarette again, holds the smoke in his mouth for a moment, opens his lips to let it curl out, “Yes?”

“You’re the best of them.”

He looks down to her, “What a _terrifying_ thought.”

He offers her the cigarette, and she takes it from his fingers. Its light ebbs and flows, glows and fades. It is almost burned down now. She rolls over, stubs it out on the ash tray on her bedside table. Rolls back. Then crawls atop him, knees against his hips, “I mean it.”

He tilts his head up so he can kiss her. Then says, “Show me then.”

\--

He finds out later that it was about this time that Joffrey takes a sip of a vodka soda. As Sansa Stark moves above him, Joffrey collapses on the floor, purpled and choking to the floor. And as Sansa gasps into his mouth that she wants to leave this place, go away with him _, take me, baby, take me_ , the King dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so i was going to wait to post this. but this has been the work week from hell (ahhhhhh it's only WEDNESDAYYYYY) and john le carre, the legendary spy novelist, died this week :(, so i just decided to, you know, GO FOR IT. (also, it's way too late for me to be up right now) 
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3


	4. well, it's time unremembered when the nameless left (what a wake trailed the eyes of the storm)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting in my last post of 2020!!!! 
> 
> I hope you all have a wonderful Happy New Year!!! <3 <3 <3 <3

He read to Tommen once about how fire burned in space. It is different down here than it is up there—on land, the flame is tapered up, elegant, looks like a woman dancing.

In space, flame burns spherically, like a little world bouncing on the edge of a match, takes less heat, less force to make it ignite.

\--

He leaves her dozing. He skates a finger down her spine before he does. Curls a hand about her waist over the sheet. Kisses her cheek. Tells her he’s going. She barely stirs. Kisses her shoulder. She sighs, turns towards him, kisses him for true. Her eyes are open, suddenly alert, “Good-bye, love.”

\--

He comes across the aftermath. The ice sculpture weeping. The wedding cake carcass. Trampled balloons. Skeleton buffet.

Sees Cersei rock against the floor, keening, Jaime barely managing to hold her shoulders. Margaery is buried in her father’s neck, crying, too.

He sees Joffrey’s body last.

It takes them until midafternoon to realize Sansa Stark is missing.

They check her room. Ash-flecked pillows. Drawers half-emptied.

It’s the bigger mystery that neat, precise, quiet Sansa Stark should keep her chambers in such disarray.

It’s clear what happened, everyone knows, she must have done it. Always the quiet ones, the good girls. It does not take long for a song to weave its way through the court, twines with myth—little Sansa Stark, always knew the red hair meant some secret evil, like the Red Women of ancient lore, always jealous of Margaery that one, never recovered from her father’s death, it changed her, she fucked the secret service entail, Sandor Clegane, don’t you know, where is he, they wonder, that’s how she got access, didn’t you see her with the cup, did you see the way she danced, gavotted on her former lover’s grave.

\--

_Take me away, baby,_ she had said, _please, honey, I want you to take me away with you. I’ll follow where you go._

\--

They air the funeral on television which Tyrion finds a bit perverse even for his father. Eyes the heavy cameras strapped to the sept’s archways.

All he can hear are Cersei’s wails underneath the horn blasts. Wonders if she is going to burn her name, like he did his, offer it to the gods on Joffrey’s pyre.

He watches it later from the little television in his room. The rattling procession. Margaery collecting flowers from the rope lines, wiping at the corner of her eye. The announcer says— _Joffrey Baratheon, First of His Name…what potential…known for his bold strokes on the international stage—_

He switches it off and goes to the office—

\--

Three days later, he is up in the morning again. Can’t quite figure why. But he wanders the halls. Wanders them like he might see her step out from behind a doorway, like she had that night, reach out her hand, slide down to kiss him.

It’s muscle memory, watching for her, wanting her.

\--

They package up her things and send them to Stannis Baratheon in plastic bags. Find old photos of her tucked under mattress and send them to him.

None of them are particularly useful but he lays them all out regardless.

Arya and her, children, in matching dresses. Her and Catelyn framing Jon in his uniform before he shipped out to the Wall. The babies on their name days. Her and Margaery, dressed for ballet class, in stiff silver-threaded skirts, hugging while they balanced on pointe. Her father’s military portrait. Her brother and his wife—she was a childhood friend too, he realizes—and her, all teenagers squinting at the camera. The corners of them are pinched like they had all been removed from tight frames.

_Why didn’t she take them?_

No time perhaps. No other explanation that he could think. 

He puts them in an envelope and tucks them in a drawer. 

\--

When he took off her slip, he had kissed down the entire length of her, knee to neck. Little puffs of breath every time he seals his mouth against her— _ah, ah, ah, ah—_ like he’s burning her a dozen times.

Thinks of the catch of her bracelet in his hair. Slid it off her too. Put it on her nightstand.

 _It’s missing a diamond, baby,_ he had said.

 _It’s old and they’re paste anyway,_ she laughed and then groaned, _Kiss me again. Please, please, please._

He looks through the inventory of things that they find in her flat—mostly to assure himself that he didn’t leave a tie pin or button behind—and cannot help but notice that, for all, the minutiae of abandoned lipstick caps and used tissues, there is no bracelet.

\--

Tommen will be king next. Eighteen, finished only one semester at the Citadel.

At the reception afterwards, held in the Great Hall, he watches, beside Varys again.

“This had to be domestic,” he says, “The Essosi could only have benefitted from an idiot like him on the throne—”

“Unless they think that Tommen will be easier to control,” Varys says.

He is right. The boy has not yet grown into his body, arms too long for his torso, chest too thin, face still rounded. He will be handsome when he is a man. But he’s not there yet.

Tywin has been named Hand; it was announced almost immediately. Mace Tyrell had already been told to pack up his office.

Tyrion watches his father, straight-backed and tall, hand heavy on Tommen’s shoulder. Introducing him to the whirl of courtiers and diplomats and civil servants.

When Tywin leaves to go speak to someone else, Tommen is not alone for long, it is Margaery, Margaery who places her hand on his elbow and whispers something in his ear.

When she goes, it is Cersei next. Wraps her arms about him, kisses his cheek.

The boy is surrounded by vultures, pecking at his bones before he even has had time to grow them.

\--

He met Tysha his first term in a class on architecture. Realized that she also took statistics.

They had sat in a booth at The Cinnamon Wind, book open, papers spread—

It was all a pretense, asking her to study for the exam, he’d already been at it for weeks—had cards and cards of Valyrian stonework tacked about his dormitory—

It was a pretense for her, too, it turns out. She probably remembered the dates better than he did anyway.

They end up feeding each other pork cracklings and half-heartedly flipping through their textbooks, doing impressions of their maester—

She gasped, they were hysterical now, everything just _so funny,_ “We should _study._ ”

He nods like he’s listening but he’s looking at her mouth.

“You _fooled_ me,” she’ll tell him later, after they were married, “You _tricked_ me.”

“With what, Tysha?” he’ll say back, mock-offended, “ _You_ pretended to not even know where Valyria was on a _map_ —”

“Foolish man for falling for it, too,” she will say fondly, “You knew I was reading Geography.”

\--

_We’re the same,_ she had said.

Now that he is thinking with the blood in his brain, not his cock, it sounds less like a declaration, more a confession, less like love, more like a clue.

\--

The day after the funeral, he has to go to the office early. Has so much to do. Goes past the library. No reason except that it’s the quickest way to the car. Does not know why he stops. Well, he does. Just—

She had sat in this chair, he thinks, they had sat together.

He’s not alone. There’s a shadow in the tall windows at the other end of the room, reclined against the window seat.

Margaery.

She is in her nightrobe still, pastel pink. It makes her look sickly pale. Her hair is down, uncombed, her scalp stiff with hairspray. She dangles a cigarette from between her fingers, flicks ash into the dregs of the coffee cup next to her. She looks at him when he enters, eyes red-rimmed but sharp still, relaxes a little when she sees that it’s him, “Oh, Uncle Tyrion, it’s you.”

“Yes. I am sorry to bother you—”

She waves her hand dismissively, “No, no, no.” She is looking at him, very carefully, “Just—well, I’m sure you know the feeling actually.”

Something feels violative about this, something wrong about being a voyeur to this rawness, he should go, he should—

“Do you know where she went?”

Oh.

“Who—”

“Don’t play stupid, not with me,” Margaery drops her cigarette into the cup, he can hear it hiss against the porcelain.

It feels like relief to be honest, “No.”

It’s like he watches something flee from her breast, she says, “I thought she might of—”

“She didn’t.”

Margaery swings her legs so she’s sitting up, bare feet grazing the floor, “She thought you hung the moon.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“She thought you were just _brilliant,_ ” she looked at him now, meanly, he thinks first, ruined, a bombed-out borough for a body, he thinks next, “ _He’s so kind, Margaery, he’s so handsome, Margaery, did you see him look at me, Margaery, there’s more to that man, Margaery._ It was sickening really.”

“She was a generous person—”

Gunshot: “She’s not dead.”

Well, they don’t know that. Not really. Though he’s sure that if she was, he would feel some sort of rip in the universal tapestry, some sort of cosmic disruption—

He says, “No.”

“I tried—I took Joffrey for her—I tried but I couldn’t—” Margaery shakes her head, shrugs her shoulder, “I just—there’s only so much white knight one can be in a skirt.”

He remembers suddenly reading to Tommen when the boy was small, while he was on leave, reading to him about the stars and space, an article about how they had discovered that the moon had its own moon, not a real one, an asteroid technically, but its own orbiter, its own attendant, so small you could not see it with human eyes.

“Margaery—”

“Why you?” she says suddenly, “Of all of the men, of all the people, why was it _you_?”

More honesty, “I don’t know.”

“ _She_ was brilliant. _She_ was good.”

“I know,” he says, “I know.”

The way the sun is shining, pouring through the windows, tumbling over her back, makes her look like a black shadow, obscures her face, she says, bitter, brittle, true, “Well, she can’t have wanted either of us—she’s gone now. To a place we cannot find.”

He nods.

There is a long, pained silence, then he says, “I have to go—“

She brushes at her cheeks, sniffs, says, “Of course. Of course you do. See you at dinner tonight.”

And he leaves her, too.

\--

“Did you know,” she said, one afternoon, head on his lap, book balanced on her breastbone.

He looked down at her, hand in her hair, distracted by his equations, “What?”

“Did you know that there are only one hundred and twenty-seven swords in the Iron Throne?” She looked scandalized, “Is that _true_?”

She was incredibly curious about his life at court, asked him all the questions she could as if he must know everything about the whole palace—

Tyrion shrugged, “Honestly, honey, I’ve never counted.” 

She gasped again, “ _And_ all the jewels in the Sept of Baelor are glass? Maegor told everyone that they were real but then they appraised them under Aegon and it turned out they were all faked!”

He snorted, “That’s a hell of a metaphor.”

She snapped the book shut, “I am _so_ disappointed.”

“They still locked it all up under the Keep during the War, though,” he said absent-mindedly, “Packed all the jewels and furniture and put it in with the dragon skulls.”

She turned to her stomach, “Really?”

He nodded, frowned at his paper, scratched out his solution, began the problem again, “It was very impressive. What I remember of it—big gray boxes and they had Kingsguard with guns in front of it, no one was allowed in—”

“For costume jewelry?” she sighed, “Ridiculous. We had one shelter for the whole neighborhood—" sighted his paper, “Honey, I think you miswrote it. Look, it’s a seven, not a nine.”

He checked his notes, “Shit—I have to redo the whole—”

“Come on, it would be right if not for that mistake in the beginning. You just misread it—”

“You _distracted_ me.”

“I did not! With what?”

“You-You—” he struggled, “Your tits, probably.”

She made to hit him with the book, hiding her grin, “You _pervert_.”

\--

_What are we doing,_ he asks Varys later, when the reception has dwindled, as he watches Tommen being led to bed by his mother, _what are we defending anymore?_

 _The realm,_ Varys says back.

 _And what is that?_ He asks. All he can see is the whole Red Keep, with its painted walls and glass jewels, sinking into the ocean, with all these men and women still dancing inside.

Varys points to a maidservant, leaning down to serve Olenna Tyrell a cocktail sausage, _How do you think that she will be served by an Essosi ruler? That the wheel that Daenerys claims to break won’t break her, or him,_ points to a steward, _right with it. Remember what I told you, we have no loyalty to any crown, we are loyal to the realm._

Tyrion nods, _Oh of course, my apologies, eyes on the horizon._

\--

They bring him in for questioning two weeks after the funeral.

It is a weekend, he is in bed, when Stannis Baratheon pounds at his door.

He is allowed to dress before being taken downtown.

Empty room. All walls. Steel table. Naked lightbulb buzzing.

Stannis sits across from him, “Let’s begin.” 

\--

Stannis Baratheon is a craterous man.

Prisoner of war. Still was, Tyrion has found, in the rare moments that he has seen him at court. Though, he cannot blame him, he always pitied that the King was not more gentle with him.

Feared it, too, once he knew it.

There is grief. Then there is pain. Then there is burning.

\--

Stannis questions him for hours. But he’s been trained for this. Dodges, skirts, skates away until—

“You were known to be friendly with Sansa Stark.”

“So was half the court,” he said, “Your own wife took lunch with her on occasion.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Nope.”

Baratheon considers him, “Really?”

He is suddenly very, very, very tired, “Lord Baratheon, do you have any timeline to back this up at all?” There is a little light inside of him, a spark, “I wasn’t even there, I left early. I didn’t even know that the King had died until the next morning.”

_Baby, stay with me. I want you to stay with me. Tell me when you leave._

“There will be witnesses to back this up?”

He nodded, snorted “About a hundred.”

“You left the reception with Sansa Stark and neither of you returned.”

_Take me to bed._

“So you knew I wasn’t at the reception—Stannis, please, this is—”

Stannis banged the table, “You were seen leaving with a reception with a woman who then disappeared. Both of you had reason to resent the King—”

_It was horrible what they did._

“And neither of us were _there,_ ” he said, “Are you really suggesting that Sansa Stark and I poisoned the King’s goblet, what? Two hours before and then left, never ensuring that it got to our target—I would like to think I’m clever but that is—”

Stannis interrupts again, pierces him with question after question—finally:

“Tyrion Lannister, I am arresting you on behalf of the Iron Throne, for the murder of Joffrey Baratheon—”

“Oh, really, Stannis—”

“—First of his Name, King of the Seven Kingdoms—”

All he can think of is the papers. The attention. The press dissecting every single one of his movements and his whole wall of connections and secrets unwinding and so—

“I get one phone call.”

That stops Stannis.

“It’s the law, Stannis, I get a phone call.”

\--

Last resort. The phone call is always the last resort.

Varys picks up on the second ring. Hands the receiver to Stannis. Watches as the man face changes and he nods, dumbfounded, listening to Varys on the other line, staring at him.

“Apologies, Lord Lannister,” Stannis says gruffly when he hangs up.

There is smugness and pride and pleasure blooming in his chest, “I’m sure, Lord Baratheon. Now _I_ have important work to do.”

He turns on his heel, “Can you be trusted, Lord Baratheon, to not let this little—” he paused for effect, “affair out,” he took a breath, “It would damage our shared goals _considerably._ ”

\--

The report that comes on his desk on Monday with his questioning, now under seal, concludes that:

‘ _Lord Tyrion Lannister was not present at the death of the King making it unlikely for him to be the culprit.’_

\--

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Bronn says when he tells him later.

He shrugged, pulls on his cigarette, says dreamily, “Oh, the look on his face. Wish it could have been my father.”

Bronn shook his head, laughing, “Far too much, Tyrion, far too much.”

\--

There is a story—a story so little-known, like Tysha’s story, that he has had to check and double-check that it has any truth: Petyr Baelish once dueled Brandon Stark for Catelyn’s hand.

It was in the candy-flossed days before the war when he was still a child. Remembers them through the clatter of Cersei’s fringed dresses, feathers in her hair, golden light, Jaime’s fingers ringed with their sister’s pearls—

It was at a party—one of the Tully girls’ fetes—coiled hair and trumpets and champagne towers and all manner of things.

Petyr had gotten drunk and declared for Catelyn, Catelyn Tully, the eldest sister, the sister who already had become engaged to Brandon Stark, had the ring to prove it, too. But Petyr had begged her, on his knees, while she had sprawled on the red velvet couch in their father’s living room, become enraged when she took it for a jest, challenged Brandon to a duel.

Brandon Stark was not one known for turning down a chance at blood.

Took the offer, found some antique hunting pistols, ignored his girl pulling on his arm, led the party, shivering, shawls slipping, sloppy and drunk out to the terrace, took ten paces and fired.

Blood spread like petals against Petyr’s ribs.

Sobered the whole house up after that.

They called for a doctor. Pressed him to lie down. Lysa was hysterical, cradled his body like he was a child. But the boy stood and tried again and again and again and again to walk. 

_What kind of man is that?_ He remembers wondering when he heard of it. _What kind of man does that?_

\--

It all ends with one of the yellow envelopes. It arrives two days after Joffrey dies but with the funeral, the coronation, his bloody arrest, all of it, he’s fallen behind.

It’s small, a receipt, a purchase order. That traces back to the purchase of Tears of Lys, an Essosi poison, the one that the coroner determined to be the cause of death.

It unites all the other evidence, joins all the red roads running across his office walls, proves his case. He puts the slip of paper in the folder, sends it to Varys. 

They send Stannis to interrogate Lysa Baelish when her husband is away from home, out for dinner.

It takes one look at her son, little Robin, and she confesses it all—that Petyr was the one who put Robb Stark in touch with the Targaryen girl, he had been a friend of the family for so long, and he was so devastated when the North rebelled, that it was him who killed Jon Arryn, too, so he could marry _her_ , they’d been in love for _years_ , that it was him who helped Sansa Stark escape, always had too much fondness for that little slut, good man that he was, had convinced her to work with him, to befriend the Queen, poor little girl, she didn’t know any better, and feed him information.

Not all of her story hangs together, not all of it makes sense, but she gives them the key to the safe in his office, lets them put a recording device in the heel of her shoe. And it’s enough to save her neck.

\--

Brandon was shot down in the war. And then Cat had married the younger one, Eddard. Traded black silk for brown wool and champagne flutes for milk bottles.

She loved them both, both brothers, it was said. Only could have been truly happy with Ned though.

Petyr, though, Petyr she never mentioned, never even a thought in the most suspicious mind that she ever cared a whit for him.

\--

They hanged him three weeks later, in the morning. Three feet away from where they shot her first father. Varys’ little birds report that he was singing a song about a girl with summer in her hair.

He never tells them where his ward is, refuses to speak her name, seams his lips shut, will not answer, or give any hint of where she is, no matter what they threaten him with, even though they are all certain that he must know.

 _What kind of man_ , Pod wonders when they go over the transcripts—

Maybe, he thinks, maybe Petyr Baelish loved her after all.

\--

_He loves me._

\--

He thinks of her at night.

Thinks of how fevered she felt, when she bowed back, arced over his knees, as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the arch of her rib cage.

Thinks of how he found a freckle on her thigh, another at her hip, a constellation on her breast. Little marks of humanity on her.

Thinks of her salt-streaked thighs, shifting them while she waited for him.

Thinks of her, blowing smoke in the dark, face lit by the pulse of a cigarette butt. 

Thinks of her skin, the craters of her body, hidden in blue shadows.

Thinks, most of all, of her sighing his name. 

\--

_Take me away, baby. Please, honey, I want you to take me away with you. I’ll follow where you go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i tell you i had to physically restrain myself from using parentheses in this chapter....*wipes sweat from brow*


	5. the spheres of your loving cast adrift

Two days after they hang Petyr, the pictures come out. Printed in the fucking newspaper.

There’s a photograph, aerial, taken from the belly of a Myrish airplane of hulking, tiled bodies.

Too obscure to see any detail, any confirmation, but the suggestion is clear.

_Fire, then,_ he thinks, calls it like a bet, like he can finally see the coin that they have set to spin, topple, settle _._

\--

And so, Operation Blackwater ends.

There’s the rest of it. The clean-up. There’s Petyr Baelish’s files which tell, well, perhaps, not everything, but a lot about the North and about the Essosi.

He pores over the files, endless they seem—but there is _nothing_ , nothing about where Sansa is, nothing about where her sister is, or her brothers. He feels like something is dying inside him, like something small and precious and white-budded is being plucked from his chest.

_Should we?_ He asks Varys, _We should find her._

Varys shrugs, _Bigger issues at hand, my lord._

There’s no time to think on it, no time for celebration or grief, in parsing through it all, in chasing down the remnants of Baelish’s ring of spies.

\--

In years, the years after, when the apocalypse has come and gone, Tyrion will sit under hot studio lights, fiddle with his tie. Liver spots on his hands now.

It will be a girl, a woman, really, but a girl to an old man.

Dark lips. Permed hair. Pantsuit.

Then, the lights are on and she is asking, _Was there any sense of what was happening in the North—any sense that there were other threats outside of the Essosi?_

He will consider the question. Take a sip of water. Tepid.

Will look at his book sitting pretty on the table beside him. Then he will tell the truth, _Not until Jon Stark. And even then—you have to remember the Night’s Watch had not been of any significance to Intelligence for decades, centuries, even._

_And after?_

\--

They find Jon Stark. That is the next thing that happens.

It has been a year and a month since he disappeared beyond the Wall. It is a minor item in the Southern papers, tucked under news of Daenerys Targaryen’s latest speech. The North, of course, stamp it right on the front—

JON STARK FOUND

Op-eds from Mormonts and Karstarks about what it means, the North will rise again, new leader, is he ready—

There is a picture, too, snapped as the boy stepped from the shelter of Castle Black’s battered airplane hangar to greet his fellow men-in-arms. They had given him a clean uniform clearly, but his cheeks are still too sickly hollow, his hair too long.

There is little about where he had been—found him amongst wildlings, they say, undercover perhaps. _Did we authorize that_ , some of his colleagues are whispering in memos, _should we have?_

They hadn’t. And Varys is intrigued. The boy should be dead. Bronn will be going soon, assignment changed—

Tyrion wonders, too, as he sits in on meetings to parse through theories. Watches as Ros, their Northern handler, builds her own board, ropes her own road map. The wildlings—if the end of the world comes, who will the wildlings support? Mance Rayder—surely, a shoe-in for the Essosi—is he dead?

They just don’t know. And even if the Night’s Watch is technically under the purview of the King, they are underfunded, too-long neglected, too leaky to stage an operation, too far North to be completely sure that all those men are truly loyal.

He’s playing double-time during the day, sitting in on the Northern analysis meetings, still making his way through the Baelish papers. 

_You’re being trained, you know that right,_ Bronn tells him when they drink at Chataya’s, still one ear pressed against the court’s doors, _Essosi, the Court, now the North, you’re being positioned._

He waves him off but it’s hard not to smirk, not to swell a little at the implication that one day, maybe soon, all those little red strings will lead back to a loop around his thumb.

\--

The Northerners have many stories about what happens after the ice comes. There are Others, wights, White Walkers, they have a dozen names.

Men dead and rebuilt from snow, veins rethreaded with ice.

They will walk the earth, they are the after.

_They are the now,_ that is what Jon Stark is saying, that is the rumor rushing down the newly built telegraph lines, _winter is here._

\--

At night, though, he wonders about her.

If she’s heard, wherever she is. Imagines her joy.

He imagines Jon, too. What it must be to return to a world so much emptier than the one he left.

Father hanged.

Mother, brother, goodsister, child he did not even know about, burst to bits.

All the babies gone.

And his sister, murderess, seductress, traitor, fled away.

The Jon in Sansa’s forgotten photograph is so much taller than his mother, just about level with his sister’s height. He has them both crushed to his sides, stands so straight, looks directly at the camera—

He pins it up next to Sansa.

\--

Dark lips. Permed hair. Pant suit.

They will take a break at some point and she will give him a thumbs up. Will mouth: _Going well._

Light readjust. Dabs sweat beading on her upper lip. Then, _We’re back with Tyrion Lannister_ —etc., etc. etc.

She will begin: _And the High Sparrow—were you aware—_

_I was gone by the time he rose to power._

She will smile politely, _Was there any sense in the Intelligence community that he was a figure to be aware of—_

He will tell the truth again, new habit of old age: _No. Though we should have. All the signs were there._

_Do you think that—_

_Lack of understanding?_

_Yes, as you say, sir—do you think that contributed what happened after?_

_Almost certainly._

\--

Stannis Baratheon has a wife who, it is rumored, who Tyrion knows, is mad. She lost her child, it must be remembered, he wants to tell others when he hears their whispers about her.

The issue is she’s gotten involved with those Red Priests—

“Like the fairy stories?” he asks Varys.

“Yes, exactly, come to life, come back, come to _purify,”_ Varys sighs, “Get in line.”

Cersei had entertained one at court, when the King was still alive, as an oddity, a zoo animal. Lovely man. They dress all in red, talk a lot about light and fire and darkness and illumination. It’s all very secret what they do even if everyone’s heard the rumors—

Lady Stokeworth at a card party: “I hear they give _massages—_ ”

“Ooh,” another one squeals, “ _that_ would liven up the Sept.”

They also buy copious amounts of milk of the poppy from the men who hang out by the Street of Seeds. That is what alerts Varys to them first. They have a girl on them, a couple of Alayaya’s, who go to their secret meetings, in the upper apartments above a sandwich shop.

Lay out on plush carpets in darkness, watch a Red Priest blow bowls of fire to life, cast dust into it to create shapes. Visions. Chanting, chanting, chanting—

“Fucking _orgasmic—_ ” the girl tells Tyrion later, in one of Alayaya’s private rooms, pulls on her cigarette, runs down their time.

“Did he touch you?”

“No, no,” she waves her hand, “It’s the whole thing, the lights, the chanting—you should do it, Tyrion, might relax you a bit.”

\--

He has a hard time picturing Stannis Baratheon, barefoot, in the dark, being _fucking orgasmic._

Until he learns that not all priests are like that. There is a woman—the Red Woman— _Melisandre_ , she is called.

She dines at the Baratheons’ table, holds services at night—

“But is she a threat to the throne?” he asks impatiently.

Stannis’ maid shrugs, “She’s more interested in the car Lady Baratheon’s buying her this month.”

\--

It starts with a soup kitchen. A fucking soup kitchen.

At breakfast, with Tommen and Margaery and Cersei. Margaery has the paper, sips orange juice—

“Have you heard of this High Sparrow?” she asks, “He’s opening a soup kitchen on the Street of Flour—”

“He’s a fanatic,” Cersei says, “No new clothing, vow of poverty and all that—”

Margaery speaks over her, “It would look marvelous with your new homelessness initiative, sweetheart.”

Tommen beams at Margaery, slides her hand against hers.

“He has a _guitar,_ ” Cersei says.

But Margaery is leaning in to peck Tommen on the cheek, “Oh, doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

And that’s the extent that he hears of it. Until later when he sees the pictures, reads the piece in a magazine: THE PRIEST AND THE PRINCESS; QUEEN TO CULTIST—

But this morning, he asks her to pass the bacon.

\--

Dark lips. Permed hair. Pantsuit.

_And what do you think caused this surge of cultism?_

He will shrug: _Everyone deals with the promise of death in a different way._

\--

Everyone has a unique apocalypse.

Turpentine. Greenish light. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

Grey silk. Moon-skin. Missing diamond. Cigarette glow.

Cersei and Jaime were always going to be each other’s, no matter the season, no matter the sky. 

He leaves her. Two weeks after Tommen’s coronation. Jaime leaves her for a brutish pilot—

There are stages to a star’s death, before they bellow open, black and whirling destruction. And Cersei has always been stellar, everyone with a hook in her five points, pulling and pulling and pulling, tugging her open.

At least, she has Tommen left and the promise of Tywin’s love to quest for.

It’s a matter of time, he thinks, watches her snarl and bite at Margaery, herself already well on her way to supernova blasting. Useless, he thinks, useless all their apocalypses will be when Daenerys comes with her fire and her blood.

Still, there’s a part of him that is terribly sad for them, all of them, when he hears that Taena Merrywether was the Queen Mother’s new favorite, that she fucks her in the night, leaves her bow-legged, that when she takes that woman to bed she makes her use another name.

\--

It’s one night—a single fuck—but he spins years from it.

Her thighs touching against his ears. Her hands finding his hair. Grasping at his fingers, splayed hot and insistent on her stomach.

He thinks about it all the time. Thinks of her drinking moonlight.

_We’re the same, you and I._

_I don’t think it matters._

What would he do if he found her—he wonders that, too. What would he do?

She would surely come back in chains. They would surely hang her, too. They would surely—

He cannot bear the waiting and he cannot bear the ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 
> 
> Also, my headcanon is that the reporter interviewing Tyrion is Sam's daughter. <3 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!


	6. there's a measure of time in your drink, so pitch time do or die, float or sink

The North believes the world will end in ice and the Seven believe it will end at the hand of dragons.

A seven-headed, crowned dragon that will eat at the earth, snap the turrets of human imagination between their jaws, poke holes through the pitiful protections that humans throw up against the inevitable, denying the truth until the end. Kill themselves in ignorance.

In the South, even the gods want to impress.

According to the septons, the High Sparrow, the Red Priests, there is much that comes after the dragons—darkness and unspeakable, sharp-toothed creatures rising from the depths of the oceans and flaming maidens dying more deaths than he can keep straight.

They will be cleansed all the same, whether by ice or by fire—

Daenerys Targaryen makes a speech on the steps of a bulky grey building in Mereen, fenced in by microphones: _One thousand years ago, my ancestors came to Westeros to build a better world. I declare to you now that we will do the same. We are coming, my homeland, we are coming to break the wheel._

\--

Space is Tommen’s obsession. He has little models of rockets in his solar. Giant celestial maps. Penciled diagram models.

It is no surprise when, as one of his first acts as king, he invites Oberyn Martell to court. He cuts a dashing figure in his wartime pilot’s gear. 

Oberyn is also one of their kind. Was, anyway. Had first met each other in training. Oberyn had been assigned to Lys while he had gone to Yun Kai. Had fucked his way through the Lysene nobility, plucking documents from under pillows, memorizing sheet-stolen secrets.

Joined up after his sister died.

Terrible accident that was, too. Beautiful girl. Widowed by the wrong man on the wrong side of the war. But then—

Car accident. Black ice. Face couldn’t be identified. None of her children’s either. Wouldn’t let their eldest brother Doran in close enough to really see it anyway—Tyrion knows that tale.

Being away from home got to be too much, in the end, missed his family, missed his wife, missed home, he had said to him, low once when they had crossed paths in King’s Landing a few months later. Wanted something different.

Different apparently meant outer space. 

But being one of them is more habit than anything and so, after the drinks and the pictures, they find themselves at midnight, in an empty movie theatre off Shadowblack Lane, sharing a cigar, watching blue-limned bodies writhe on crumpled sheets.

“How’s Ellaria?” he asks.

Oberyn didn’t look away from the screen, absent-minded, “Well. A girl of hers almost convinced her to do one of these.”

He snorts, “Almost?”

“Then I became a fucking astronaut. Wouldn’t look good—well, it _would_ look good is the problem—”

They laugh at that.

“And how is it?” Oberyn asks, “You’re not in Yun Kai anymore, Jon Arryn’s gone, Joffrey’s dead—”

“That’s classified,” Tyrion says.

Oberyn groans, “Not even me?”

“Not even you.”

Tyrion grins.

Oberyn sighs, “I’m glad I’m out—oh, fuck, that’s good.” Bites his lip. Leans forward to watch the screen, “We should go to Chataya’s after.”

They should. He should get a girl—dark hair or blonde or anything but red—he should get a girl and learn the name she wants him to call her. He should get a girl and—

“You always say you’re glad you’re out but then you’re always _asking._ ”

Oberyn shrugged. Didn’t answer. They watched in silence for a time, then, “I think I figured it out.”

Tyrion sucked the cigar, stared at the screen, “What?” 

“Elia.”

Tyrion feels a tightness, an ache, a flutter in his chest, says coolly, “Did you?”

“I think I figured it all out.”

It’s like he’s suddenly stupid, says again, “What?”

“I figured out what happened. What ‘GC’ means—”

Ground out, “Was it him?”

Oberyn looked at him. The lights from the film shift across his face, red, white, orange, throws it into relief, sharpens his angles, hisses, serpentine, “Yes.” 

\--

His aunt Genna tells him that he is his father’s child, and he does not believe her.

He serves the realm, though she does not know that for sure.

His father has been in the military service, yes, the civil service, yes, the Hand to the King—

But Tywin Lannister is a coward, before all else. Too terrified of Aegon as he coaxed wildfire out of the alchemists’ laboratories, too terrified of Robert when he came to strike him down, holed himself up in Lannisport when the old King lost his mind, unwilling to take charge of the madness he had enabled—

Bombs had rained across the country for two years, but it was not until Ned Stark was pounding at the capital’s gates with rifles and tanks, and with his son’s bullet in the old King’s head, that Tywin had emerged, apologetically, pushed them all over the finish line.

Letting him live was a mistake. But he’d agreed to don a general’s coat in the last months of the war, agreed to the tell them where the rest of the wildfire was— _let me retire, let me go home, I am an old man, weary of the world._

Daggers and cloaks, that is Tywin Lannister’s way—could never confront any enemy but his smallest son in the face. Had those he did not like dealt with in silence, his face, their face unrecognizable.

People fear him and Tyrion knows why. He had wanted Tyrion dead from his first breath, too afraid to kill him, tried to wreck him instead. Because cravenness does not mean that Tywin Lannister has no bite, no claws—it just means he will not claim his part when the ravaging is done.

\--

It is Oberyn, during training, after two nights of sharing their twin tragedies, who suggests that his sister’s death is connected to Tysha. 

But it is Tyrion, after years of pondering, who suggests that it is his father’s doing.

He had lost the taste for revenge in Yun Kai, though, lost it with his name, fight went out of him, too. Too tired for it, becomes too devoted to the realm and to Varys.

Oberyn, though, never ever able to let a thing go. 

\--

Turpentine. Greenish light. White sheet. Bloom of blood.

Besides that, all he remembers are Satin’s hands on the steering wheel. Trembling. Shaking so hard he could not get the keys in the ignition the first, second, third attempt—

They’d been away, partying, him and Bronn and Shagga and Satin, because Shagga was going _away_ —

Yna had called first, before the police had—

Tysha was meant to meet her and Cat at the Happy Port, left them waiting for hours—

She had told him about that, earlier in the day, but he hadn’t been listening, laughing at something Bronn was saying, _Take the car, love, you’ll be fine, Ty, love you, bye, bye, bye._

Then the police had— _So sorry, Mr. Lannister—_

Satin’s hands, steady now, on top of his.

It’s all very dim but for that. 

\--

For the funeral, they had a sept. His father didn’t come and neither did Cersei but Jaime did and Aunt Genna too. Bronn’s mother had cried, well, they all had, wouldn’t they, but he remembers her mostly. She had brought flowers, too.

_I am so sorry for your loss,_ his aunt had said to him, meant it, remembers that kinship, _I am so sorry for your loss, Tyrion._

\--

Tommen and Margaery become engaged. The magazines try to spin it, print engagement photos—

But it’s too soon. And he’s so young. Overplayed her hand a bit there.

When it comes time of the Feast of the Maiden, there are cheers, yes. But there are cries of _whore,_ too.

\--

Three weeks before the next wedding, they all gather around the television in Tommen’s solar to watch Oberyn’s launch. He waves, winks, quakes the crowd with his charm. Takes a bow. Kisses Ellaria before he goes, loads up with his crew.

Tommen is bouncing, bouncing like a child, clutching Margaery’s hand as they hear the countdown.

The rocket flares, streams fire. Tommen cheers.

Then it explodes in light, red, orange, white.

The room is silent as they watch the launch pad burn.

\--

His identity is a privilege of the Hand, not the king, the Hand. Joffrey had never had one, not after Arryn died and so it means that Jon Arryn is the only person outside of Varys’ office who knew for sure who he was. Tywin does not even react when he finds out that his youngest, littlest, most depraved son is, in fact, the spy responsible for Operation Blackwater. He certainly does not mention it to Tyrion personally.

Craven.

Two weeks after Tommen’s coronation, Tyrion returns late to his chambers, after a weekend visiting Pycelle at the Citadel, to find them locked.

He finds a steward who has the decency to look shame-faced and explained that his things had been moved.

His rooms are not quite where Sansa’s were, but they are smaller, separate from the main hallways of the palace, as far from the center as possible, without moving him into the town proper. 

He knows, knows it in his bones, that this is the beginning of the end for him.

\--

He weeps for Oberyn. Writes to Ellaria in code to tell her how deeply, deeply sorry he is, how regretful he is he cannot go to the funeral, would give the game away, how he knows what it is to see your whole heart smolder on the pavement. Goes to Varys. Asks if—

“Mechanical failure,” Varys says, “That’s what they’re saying.”

Shakes his head.

“It wasn’t the Essosi, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says, “Wasn’t the bloody Essosi at all.”

\--

His aunt always told him he was his father’s son.

It enrages, disgusts, disgraces him to think on it. It curdles his blood, weakens his bones, frays his nerves.

He thinks about Oberyn, his face, so well-cut, and Ellaria and their dozen children. Tysha and Elia, too. And poor, ill, vile Aegon.

Oberyn’s insistence on keeping his name— _He_ was brave, _he_ was good. And he is gone.

\--

It is a week before the wedding when he is called to Varys’ office. Asked to resign. The Spider cannot even meet his eyes.

“I won,” he said, “Renly and Petyr, they were _mine._ ”

“You always have had an ego.”

He presses on: “It’s unfair, Varys, and—”

“Yes,” Varys finally glances up, “Yes, it is.”

“It was my father.”

“Yes.”

He pounds the table, shakes his finger, “I have done everything, I have gone where I supposed to, I did my fucking job—”

It changes nothing. Varys cannot defy the order of the Hand to the King. He rages and rants and slams his fist against Varys’ desk, feels tears clouding— _What am I to do,_ he pleads, _I have no wife, no lover, no family, I have no job, I have no name. I gave them all away._

Finally, he goes.

Stands outside the Westerosi Intelligence Building and smokes a half-dozen cigarettes, one after the other. Grinds them beneath his toe until there is nothing left of them by a streak of ash on the pavement. 

\--

Spying is muscle memory. He follows and watches and listens but, without purpose, he becomes just a little lech.

At night, he dreams about having her body, moon-touched, under his hands again.

\--

It is dull. That is what he finds. Civilian life is numbing.

\--

Once when he’s been drinking too early in the day, he goes to Tywin’s office.

His father barely looks up.

He hisses at him: _What are you doing, you old fool? What have you done—_

Tywin stops him, raises his finger, stops him with just one _fucking_ finger, “You think this display is some sort of righteousness, but it merely proves my point. I know you, Tyrion, I raised you. You wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure. Not with what is coming.”

_Oh, fuck you, Father._

“And was Oberyn Martell unable to handle the pressure?”

Tywin’s eyes sharpen, “Oberyn Martell died as a result of an unfortunate mechanical failure.”

He scoffs, “You should have just put black ice on his death cert—”

Tywin shakes his head, “So _indiscrete_.”

Poisoned silence settles between them.

His throat is tight, and he grinds out, “And what, precisely, is stopping me from taking all I know to Daenerys Targaryen?”

Tywin almost smiles, not quite, “You won’t.”

Spits: “And why is that?” 

“Because you’re a Lannister,” his father says, “And you will do as you are told.”

\--

He packs up his office, takes the dying plant from the corner stand and puts it in a cardboard box he steals from the Keep’s kitchen. Puts all the documents into folders. Unsticks all his photographs, disconnects the whirring machine, rewinds the red tape.

He takes two photographs—Sansa, toes in the water, smiling, and her brother, puts them in the envelope with her other pictures, tucks them into his wallet, behind his first wife, behind Bronn and Shagga and Satin on graduation day, behind Jaime and his mother, behind Tommen. 

\--

He has to return his keys to Varys. The keys to his false office.

It is so mundane, so ridiculous, that he laughs when he receives the message.

But he goes.

He is unshaven, unkempt. And Varys tells him so.

He turns over the keys. Drops them on the desk.

Varys stops him from going, puts a hand on his shoulder, shakes his hand, “Thank you, Mr. Lannister, for your service.”

He wants to be sick. He wants to—

He pivots to leave. Makes it to the door before he hears, “Tyrion.”

He looks over his shoulder, a little surprised, “Yes?”

“Alayne Stone,” Varys says, “Lives in Dorne. You should look her up.”

He raises an eyebrow, “Why?”

Varys’ lips quirked, “Just never say that I never took any advice from you.” 

\--

Paranoia has always been a companion for him, ever since Tysha died, ever since he first stepped out on a Yun Kai street.

His outburst with his father will not be forgotten, he knows.

Not the comment about black ice either. Not the question about Oberyn.

He has always wanted to be feared.

_It will get you killed,_ Bronn had growled to him once, when he had been too obvious, too clever, early on, at a party, _It will get us all killed._

_\--_

He still has his paper notes. Needs to burn them or shred them. But he hasn’t—

The minute he returns to his apartments, he tears through them. Checks names. Can’t find an Alayne—

Then.

Wedding announcement: _Lysa Arryn, daughter of Hoster and Minisa Tully is to wed Petyr Baelish, son of Alayne—_

Then.

The receipt. The receipt that brought down Petyr Baelish. It had been dated, the date that it had been received, noted in Baelish’s ledgers.

He ticks back through his memory.

Cards. They had been playing cards. But she had _left. Left_ almost an hour before he had, that corridor connected all over, not just to her room—

_Hi,_ she had said, looking a phantom in the feeble light of the corridor, knelt before him, reached out her arm, _Hi._

He had taken it, her hand, he means, he remembers, he had taken it and followed.

\--

After she came the third time, astride his hips, muttering at his mouth, she had collapsed against him, exhausted. They are perfumed like sex, settled into their skin, mixes with whatever sharp scent she had been wearing.

They are both so loaded up with _feeling_ , every nerve ending so _awake,_ that it almost hurts to touch like this, that they both stutter a little at the places where they skim against each other.

She is going to fall asleep; he can tell, she knows it too. She droops against him. But she grasps his shoulders, “Baby,” she says, “Tyrion. Tell me when you leave.”

“You kicking me out?”

She smiles, eyes still fuck-drunk, “No. But you’re going to leave. And I want to know when, I want to say good-bye.”

_So sweet._

He kisses her, smiles at her mouth, kisses her once more, “Not yet.”

She nods. Kisses him this time.

\--

He dials Jaime’s phone number, but it rings and rings and rings with no answer until—

“Hello?” Woman’s voice.

“Oh, hi, it’s Tyrion—”

She seems surprised, “Yes, hi, how are you?”

He clears his throat, “I—Is Jaime there?”

“No, he’s out now—he’ll be back—”

“No, no, no—”

“Tyrion, are you alright?”

“Yes,” he says, “Can you just tell him that I was calling to say thank you?”

“For what?” She seems confused, “Tyrion—”

“Just for everything. Our childhood, the whole thing—”

“Tyrion, are you safe? Do you need me to call someone?”

He smiles a little into the phone, “No, my dear, no. I-I’m a little drunk is all.”

She seems relieved, just the Imp at play, “Oh, alright, have some water, I’ll have him call you in the morning.”

“Alright,” he says, looks at his cases by the door, the envelope fat with pictures, hers and his, that balances atop it, “And Brienne?”

She sighs, not tiredly, but a little amused, “Yes, Tyrion?”

“Best of luck. He’s a good man once you—”

“I know.”

Of course, of course, of course she does. Foolish man.

“Goodbye.”

“We’ll talk soon.”

He hangs up first.

\--

He does not tell anyone where he is going either. Packs up his things, calls a cab in the middle of the night, calls Bronn from a little glass-paneled phone booth in the airport.

“Goodbye, my friend,” he says.

There is a breath of static on the line, understanding, then, “Goodbye, Tyrion.”

\--

The airplane is tightly packed, commuter flight from Lannisport to Dorne. He did not bring much with him. Varys gave him his old papers as a courtesy. It’s a tradition when a spy retires—papers to start over if they wish. Old men get them mostly, old men and those like him who are past their usefulness.

“Hugor Hill?” a stewardess leans down.

“Yes?”

“Peanuts for you, ser.”

\--

King’s Landing wheels out of sight, bloodied by the sunrise.

He leans back, ears popping with the pressure.

The stewardess has given him a paper, he only knows things via the paper anymore anyway.

He reads of his cousin, Lancel, his head now grooved with the High Sparrow’s sign.

He cannot bear it, looks back at his city, shrinking now, sinking now, beneath the ebb and flow of the clouds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone. it seems, in event of everything, that my new year's resolution to eat more vegetables and read more books feels a bit useless atm.  
> anyway this chapter was rewritten very last minute so is in a very raw state right now. forgive any typos, etc. the next chapter is ready to go though and disgustingly fluffy if it's any consolation. 
> 
> also, outing myself that my tinfoil hat asoiaf theory is that tysha is the sailor's wife. :) 
> 
> stay safe and well, my friends. <3


	7. what was the song that playing when we heard? (something about a murder, a brood, a fleet, a flock of birds)

Northern and Southern skies are not the same. He learned that at university. The pattern of constellations is the same, naturally, not like in Essos where they see whole other planets, but they do have all different names.

In the North, away from the persistent gray smog of the South, you can see the twist, the spiral of the galaxy. Left him slack-jawed when he first saw it. _It’s a bridge,_ he read once, _a bridge to the dead. That’s the road the heroes walk when they die._

In the North, there are many names, heroes’ names, for the constellations, but the brightest and the best is a foot.

When the Children of the Forest ruled, when the seasons had yet to be set, there was a battle between a Child-Made-of-Ice and a Child-Made-of-Flowers, brothers but kings both. The Child-Made-of-Ice was cruel, unforgiving. He wanted the eternal winter to begin then, wanted to capture the land right then, preserve it in its current perfection. But the Child-Made-of-Flowers was more tender-hearted and hoped for life with all its rupturing chaos. They battled and the Child-Made-of-Flowers won, cut off his brother’s foot and killed him, then placed it in the sky as a promise to all the others, the magical and the mundane, a dream for spring.

\--

White linen suit. Dornish sun. Peeling nose. He looks like any other tourist. So does she.

He notices her through the crowded market because of how little he notices her.

It took him six months to get to Dorne, it takes him six weeks to find her.

She is shopping. Powder blue shift. White pumps. Cat’s eye sunglasses. Basket on her arm. Narrow border of brown hair underneath her scarf.

She is moving quickly, dipping under broad awnings to select oranges, lemons, limes, only one mango.

He follows her. Slowly. Samples olives and sugar cane juice and ducks his face into a bouquet of flowers. But his eyes are on her.

\--

There is one thing that is the same in all the skies he has ever seen: the North Star—

“It’s actually three stars,” Tommen says, “A star _system_.”

\--a trinity so closely joined they look as one. The point about the whole land wheels, constant in any land.

A boat with peeling sides, bobbing off the coast, jeweled shadows, _like a princess, honey._ Heads thrown back, wide-mouthed, trying to pick out pictures in the sky.

 _It reminds me of you,_ he tells his wife when he sees it, them, in the eye of the Aegon’s dragon, _always there, whenever I feel like a sailor lost,_ he’s not really old enough to know how to describe the overwhelming blackness he sees sometimes, _you’re there, waiting, guiding._

She does not laugh at that. Takes his hand instead.

 _My love,_ she said, she will say, _Tyrion._

\--

She turns down a narrower street and he does too. Then down an alley lined with barrels of olive oil. Practiced nonchalance. He is sure she can hear him, the scuff of his shoes on the paving stones.

“Miss Stone!” he calls, and she cannot pretend she does not hear that.

She turns, “Oh. Mr. Hill.”

She knows.

Sunglasses lower, tucked away in her basket. Press of lips, eyes to sky, eyes to his.

 _No use_ , he thinks, _the jig is up_.

“Would you join me for tea, Mr. Hill?”

“Yes, Miss Stone, I would enjoy that.”

\--

It seems a half a thousand years ago—silver skin, blue light, fingers twined—all seems very out of place walking down the sunny street, three feet apart.

\--

The tea shop she chooses has low ceilings, is dim even in the late afternoon. They sit near one of the few windows at the front though, watching the clamor of the street through colored glass, chipped and swollen with age.

The seats are high, and he has to climb the rungs of them to sit up at the tabletop. She doesn’t watch him though, taps her nails against table, stares out the window.

It was past the lunch hour by the time they arrived, too soon for dinner—and so the restaurant was empty but for a few old men playing cyvasse, smoking pipes. He peers closer—it’s a cyvasse parlor, he realizes, the tabletop is checkered in black and white, there’s a battered wooden box, next to the stack of napkins, between the dishes of salt and pepper.

He opens it—sets up his side. She only turns to look at him when he begins to arrange hers, “What are you doing?”

“I assume that’s why we’re here.”

She hesitates, then nods, rustles through her purse for a cigarette, clicks her lighter until it sparks. She does not offer him one and he does not ask. Lets him set the board, makes the first move though.

It moves faster than King’s Landing—one game, at least, is over for them.

She takes two knights and a dragon besides, in the first seven moves. The pieces click. He takes her trebuchet. Then an elephant.

They are both distracted, though, she keeps glancing out the window, cannot look at his face, he keeps looking at her hands, at her hair. Red varnish. Brown dye. Her ring finger is rubbing against her thumb, nervous beneath the steady cradle of her cigarette. He watches it, the drag of her thumbnail, up and down, up and down, up and down, the length of her finger.

It’s a draw. Their kings both confront each other in the center of the board. He could win—it’s his turn, an accident, really, the end of their patterned turn-taking—but the elegance of it all is irresistible and so he extends his hand, “Even, then.”

She accepts it. Presses her cigarette to ash in the tray at her elbow. Slides her hand against his, fingers against his wrist, “Even.”

\--

A waiter comes over shortly after, gives them tall, thin glasses of warm, reddish tea. A small bowl of sugar cubes. Two silver spoons.

She drops in a sugar cube—she liked her tea sweet, would drool endless spoons of honey into her morning cup, he remembers—she knocks it about with her spoon until it dissolves.

“I heard they hanged him,” she says at last.

“Yes,” he says, glad to be saying something, at least, to her, “He died well, I believe. Sang ‘The Seasons of My Love.’”

He’s not sure if he should tell her that. But she nods, takes a drink of tea, “My mother taught him that one. When they were children.”

\--

It had rained that night at the ballet. He hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella so he stood in the warm, golden foyer waiting for his car. Watched the slide of red, white, yellow headlights, melting onto the gray street like streaks of wet paint.

She had walked past him them, Petyr at her elbow, heard him say, “I’ll bring round the car, sweetling.”

“Alright, Uncle Petyr.”

Petyr sees him on his way out, tips his hat, adjusts his ivory silk scarf, “Tyrion, good to see you.” Turns back, “Won’t be a minute.”

She nods. And he is gone, jogging out into the rain.

She smiles at him, leaned on the opposite wall, almost embarrassed, “He’s taking me for dinner.”

“That’s kind of him—”

She says quickly, “It’s my nameday.”

He can see the whole fact sheet, neatly typed, in his mind. He smiles, “Many happy returns,” then because he’s can’t _fucking_ resist, “You look lovely.”

She does. Floating black tulle, wrapped in white fox fur, spangled in beads—she looks like she belongs on the stage, looks like the night sky gone for a walk, “Thank you—he bought it, Uncle Petyr did—”

Just as he guessed.

She went on, “He likes that, dressing me up. He never had children so—”

 _He made you his doll,_ he thinks, winces at his own cynicism.

Tyrion smiles, “It’s kind of him. He is very fond of you.” 

She dips her chin, suddenly somber, murmurs, “I think he’s a terribly lonely person, sometimes, like he doesn’t know how to— _connect_ , not like us. It makes me sad,” sighs, shakes her head, like she’s waving away a bee, is bright again, “What did you think? Of the show?”

“It was lovely—I’d never seen it before—”

“Oh, really, _Florian and Jonquil_ is one of my _favorites—”_

“I know.”

She flushes then, smiles at him, “You remembered.”

 _It’s just my job,_ he wants to say, can hear how mysterious, how debonair he would sound, instead says, “Of course, my lady.”

She grins, then, looks through the door, “Oh, there’s Petyr, I should go—he worries.”

Remembers saying good-bye to Tysha on a train platform, when he was young, _I have to go, my father’ll worry._

Sansa’s so _young_ , too young to be flirting with an old widower like him at a ballet, too young to have a broken engagement behind her, too young to have her mother’s friend as her only companion on her nameday.

She steps across the foyer suddenly, leans down, puts her lips against his cheek—

Static. Sends him to static.

“Have a good rest of your night, Tyrion.”

He nods mutely. And then she goes, night-sky skirts blooming about her as she hurries down the steps to her uncle’s car.

He walks home in the end. 

\--

The waiter brings platters next—grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb and mint, dates filled with cheese, olives glistening in brine, broad, brown flatbread, shallow bowls of oil sprinkled with rosemary and garlic.

He says next, “They brought me in.”

“Did they?”

“But about fifty people saw that I left the wedding—”

She nodded, “It was a big affair.”

“I feel like I should thank you for saving my life.”

She smirks a little, “You’re welcome. Turned out to be well worth my time.”

He doesn’t joke back, “The touch with having me stay until morning until all the chaos had cleared—”

But she looks like he has struck her, like he slapped her on the cheek, “Is that what you think of me? Truly?”

\--

There is only one moment, one moment in the whole year that he watches her, that he thinks he might be completely wrong about her—

Cigarette cold in the ash tray. Cloud over the moon, spills ink, near complete darkness.

It is after he has assured her that he will stay, that he will let her know when he does go. The relief rips through her, can't see it, feels it in the collapse of her body. Will ponder it later after everything unfolds. She will fall asleep soon, they both know it, the way her head falling against his shoulder. But she says, barely hears it, feels it in the vibration against his jaw, “I don’t want this to be the only time.”

Breath, tilts his head away from her, hairline crack in the plaster, “Okay.”

“I know with Joffrey—it will be hard—if we ever wanted to get—well, you know— _court_ ,” she tangles her words, “I just—I want to keep this. You, I mean.”

“Sansa,” he says. Cannot face the _apocalypse_ of what she is saying, wants to jape, “Well, dear, in the dark, any man is the Knight of Flowers, I suppose—”

“Don’t be mean,” she says, insists, “I meant what I said.”

_You’re the best of them._

This isn’t how people like them talk—not even in bed—they don’t ask their lovers to stay the night, they don’t speak of wanting and courting and they don’t hide their faces in others’ neck to do it either.

Oh, but she _is_ tender in pressing all of the letters of his name into his chest.

Then she is gone, with her bracelet, leaves nothing but some photographs and the keys to the kingdom printed on yellowed paper.

\--

The meal ends with crackling sheets of pastry, studded with walnuts, soaked in honey.

“All your enemies are dead now.” 

She breaks off a corner of their pastry, flakes everywhere, holds it to his lips, says lightly, “Not all.” 

He takes it from her, eats from her fingers, it is so sweet it makes his throat raw.

She gives him another piece and this time he catches her wrist, kisses right above her pulse point, where he can feel the flutter of her blood. She grazes the bridge of his cheek with her fingertips, tacky with sugar, then pulls back.

She takes a sip of her tea, gazes again out the narrow window at some commotion happening on the street.

The windows let in little light but just enough to illuminate the fullness of her face.

“We should get married.”

She looks up at that, sudden and surprised. Not unhappy though, he thinks. 

“Why?” she asks, “Because I beat you at a board game sometimes?”

There’s a half-hundred things he should say— _I am so in love with you, Sansa._ But she’s clever, too. So, instead: “You know why.” The moment is too sharp, altogether too rich, and so he softens, “Think of it, the disgraced daughter and the demon monkey. We’re perfect for each other.”

That does make her smile. Hides it in her own shoulder. 

She eats her own piece of pastry. Drinks her tea. Then: “Wouldn’t your divided loyalties become a problem, Mr. Hill?” she says, delicate.

“Would yours, Ms. Stone?”

She considered him, wary, he thinks first, disappointed, he thinks next. Then she says, “And here I thought you were the cleverest man in Westeros.”

He did not respond.

“Though, perhaps,” she murmurs, licks her thumb of syrup, “that is part of the problem.”

“What is?”

“You want everyone to think you’re so clever,” she trails off, shrugs, then continues conversationally, “You have the same problem in cyvasse. You complicate it all—” she gestured to the board, the pieces, all mixed and shambled between lunch plates, like she is still divining the game, then looked at him, very seriously, “I assure you my loyalties have never been divided.”

And he knows, just knows it, that she’s not talking about the end of the world. 

He finds her knee under the table, touches it, “Hugor Hill was a parting gift.”

She nods, seems to understand what he is saying: “And Alayne was mine.”

She searches his face like it’s a game board. Seems to waver.

He smirks a little, “Come on, baby, it’s the end-times.”

Bites her lip, searches for his hand under the table, spreads hers on top of his, then says, shy and fond like a secret, “Well, then—”

And she smiles at him like a girl newly engaged.

That’s when he kisses her. 

\--

She lives above the cyvasse parlor is what he finds out.

\--

She presses her hand to the hook of his jaw and pulls him nearer.

She was never the moon, never so fickle, he thinks with great shame and with great joy, she is like—

 _Stop,_ she says, _stay here with me._

And for the first time since autumn, he feels his feet touch the ground.

\--

He will find out later that as they climb the narrow stairs to her little studio flat, Varys takes a meeting in Jorah Mormont’s prison cell. That as she tugs off her dress, stands before him, in her smallclothes, takes his hand, leads him to bed, _I waited for you, I’ve been waiting for this,_ Varys is jotting down the contact information for one Daenerys Targaryen. That as Sansa begins to burst apart on his fingers, _oh, oh, oh,_ a bomb goes off at the Red Keep and Tywin Lannister is pronounced dead at the scene.

And when she presses a kiss to his breastbone, _I love you, baby,_ a queen is pacing in a barbed-wire bound shipyard, shadowed by her child’s wings.

That as they lie together and she says to him, a little sad, _I told you, told you we were the same,_ there are men raising toasts to her one brother and sinking bullets into the other. And that as he says it back to her, _I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,_ there is a girl learning to forget her name too.

And that as he gives her back the photographs and shows her his own and wipes away the tears, _new frames, that’s what we need, sweetheart,_ there is a boy, knotted to the base of a tree, seeing the world for the first time.

\--

But that is all what they will find out later, in tomorrow’s paper, splashed with Dornish coffee, in two years, over the payphone at the restaurant they have begun to frequent, _Tyrion, the realm has need of you,_ in other times, unfathomable and _soon_ , from others’ mouths.

But today, they are tangled in each other, sticking to the sheets of their bed—

\--

_I_ _’ll get you a ring,_ he tells her the next morning, _We’ll pick one out, whatever you want, baby. And a white dress and a sept and—_

She doesn’t even care. _We’re getting_ married—

She’ll sigh and giggle and kiss him over yesterday’s oranges and eggs and toast and a printed picture of Daenerys standing on the gray prow of a warship. 

She’ll weep about it later, they both will—she will cry out for her brothers and sister and her mother and her fathers—but she is still giddy now and silly and—

 _Apocalyptic,_ he thinks when he opens her robe, brushes his thumbs along her waist, hands hot from his coffee mug, leans his brow against her breast, below her heart, between her lungs, _fucking apocalyptic._

\--

—and the late afternoon sun spills in through the blue-shuttered windows, turns the whole of her body golden, sunshine-rich, drowns the shadows of her in pools of honey.

“You are quite good at that, Mr. Hill,” she says, as he slips from within her. She lies next to him, hair all tumbled back, leg crooked over his hips, arm crossed over his chest, and she’s _smiling—_

If he took a picture _right now_ —

She is joking, he can tell, but he is not in the mood for teasing, the weight of the air feels too thick for any lightness.

“Baby?” she asks, a little worried, strokes a lock of his hair away, “Baby, are you—”

Him: “That’s not my name.” His hand searches for hers, “Say my name.”

Her fingers find his, pulse points touch. She leans in first, he swears it, though it is more a compromise the way their mouths meet in the center of it all. When they part, his hands still are cradling her neck, her head tips forward, brows knock together.

When she does, speak first, still a little breathless, it is low:

“Say mine first.”

And so, he does. Again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, that's a wrap, folks. thanks for coming along this weird tangent with me, you all are the best <3 <3 <3 thank you especially for allowing me to have this opportunity to share my true passion in life which is forcing random trivia about space down people's throats by whatever means necessary. ;) (on an only slightly related note, i would like to dedicate this fic to dua lipa's "levitate" which i believe exists, fully formed, as is, in this universe, tyvm)
> 
> the story about the children of the forest and the foot is loosely adapted from the norse legend of koller's foot as is the story of the galaxy being the road for the dead. 
> 
> much love, see you on the next one :*

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooooooo....this is the Cold War Spy AU that no one asked for but I have felt compelled to write because a.) my current WIP and I are NOT on speaking terms atm, thank you very much, and b.) I am so freaking addicted to The Crown right now and the Anthony Blunt episode broke me with its brilliance. 
> 
> Fic title from Hooverphonic's "2 Wicky" which is either about the Cold War or an old synthesizer.  
> Chapter titles from Johnny Flynn's "Time Unremembered"


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